MECHANICAL 

IN 
EDUCATION 




SELDEN 



Class __[ 




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Book-- S^ 

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WORKS OF 
Frank Henry Selden 

Cloth bound. Fully illustrated. 
Woodwork for Grades $1.00 
Elementary Woodwork 1.00 
Elementary Turning 1.00 

Elementary Cabinetwork 1.00 
Elementary Drawing, 138p. 0.75 
Wood Finishing 0.35 

Mechanical Sci. Methods. 1.00 
Part One only 0.60 

Suggestive Courses .35 

Mechanical Science in Educa- 
tion, with portrait 1.00 



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in 2011 with funding from 
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Mechanical Science 



In Education 



BY 



FRANK HENRY SELDEN 

AUTHOR OF THE 

MSCHANICAL SCIBNCE SERIES 



The Mavdslay Press 

y^^LiLilY CITY, N. DAK. CRANESVILLE, PENN. 



.3 



A- 



copyriohtbd in 1909-10 by 

William George Bruce 

Copyrighted in 1920 by 

Frank Henry Selden 

All Rights Reserved 



JUL -6 1920 
©CU571670 



PREFACE 

Beginning in 1909 the author wrote several ar- 
ticles for "The American School Board Journal." 
In 1910 six of these articles, all that had been pub- 
lished at that time, were republished in a small book 
entitled '^Manual Training." The edition of the 
early reprint being exhausted, the author secured 
permission from Mr. William George Bruce to re- 
print the entire series; and, therefore, acknowledg- 
ment is due Mr. Bruce personally and the publish- 
ers of '^The American School Board Journal" for 
this opportunity of bringing these several articles to- 
gether in convenient form. 

The change of title is due to the growth of the 
Mechanical Science work. Today this system is 
definitely established with well defined character- 
istics that differentiate it from all other systems of 
school shopwork or schemes of industrial education 
for either public or private schools. That it should 
bear a name readily expressing its individuality 
and character is too evident to require comment. 

That this system of school shopwork deserves 
the most careful consideration by all friends of edu- 
cation may be argued both from the results obtained 



4 MECHANICAL SCIENCE 

in educational and industrial values, and because of 
the most emphatic approval of subject matter and 
methods of instruction by every educator who 
has become familiar with this system. 

That this work is based upon great fundamental 
principles rather than a personality is proven beyond 
dispute by the unusual success of this system when 
taught by teachers of greatly varying temperaments 
and personalities. To so great an extent has the 
success of the work been demonstrated that any 
school may be certain of obtaining similar results if 
a fairly well qualified teacher of Mechanical Science 
is employed and given a reasonable opportunity. 
In this connection it seems necessary to caution 
those wishing to investigate or adopt this system to 
be sure that they are not deceived in regard to the 
schools they visit or teachers whom they employ. 
The safe way is to correspond directly with the pub- 
lishers of the Mechanical Science texts whose every 
interest is to secure a complete and impartial in- 
vestigation and to provide teachers who can be de- 
pended upon to use correct methods of instruction. 

The articles reprinted in this volume do not 
give the elaborate and connected treatment of this 
subject that one might reasonably expect to find in a 
book especially prepared for that purpose. They 
do, however, state with reasonable clearness the 
author's views and the fundamental principles on 
which this system is based. Those who wish a 



IN EDUCATION 5 

more detailed statement of the system should con- 
sult the texts and other publications by the same 
author. For a complete view of the arrangexTient of 
problems with reasons for the particular work of 
each grade the book ^ ^Suggestive Courses in 
Mechanical Science" should be consulted. Spe- 
cial class room methods are given in considerable 
detail in ' 'Mechanical Science Methods." 

To the articles as originally published some ex- 
planations and additions have been added. These 
are enclosed in brackets. In most cases the terms 
'^manual training" and ''mechanical science" have 
been retained as used in the original publications. 

Discussions which have come to the notice of 
this author suggest the necessity of emphasizing the 
fact that Mechanical Science is not a group of se- 
lected tool processes of general utility. Mechanical 
"hash" is of no more value than mathematical 
"hash" or indiscriminate pickings from any other 
science. 

We ought also to keep in mind that Mechanical 
Science is not a selection of "fundamental tool 
processes," a phrase now used b}^ some in discuss- 
ing industrial education. If there are fundamental 
principles then there can be no such thing as funda- 
mental tool processes; because the very nature of 
a principle requires a possibility of its application 
in a variety of processes and hence no one process 
can be fundamental in that group. As all groups of 



r MECHANICAL SCTEKCF 

processes must depend upon fundamental princi- 
ples, then no group or any process of any group can 
be considered fundamental. Processes are the mul- 
tiplicity of applications of principles. It is the 
principles that are fundamental and therefore com- 
paratively few in number, and because of being 
limited in number are capable of being learned and 
understood by a reasonable course of study in the 
science. Processes are infinite in number and, 
therefore, to attempt to become proficient in their 
use by a rote learning of them is an endless task and 
may result in a total failure to accomplish some 
simple piece of work because the particular process 
required has not been learned altho many other 
processes have been mastered. 

The inability of the one who has simply learned 
tool processes to adapt himself to modern industrial 
requirements is the cause of the abandonment of 
the apprenticeship system. The employer learned 
by experience that the seven years consumed in 
training a workman in processes did not yield a 
sufficient return for the cost of instruction. The 
student of Mechanical Science learns the funda- 
mental principles by the use of properly selected 
studies, learns to apply them in the devising of 
processes for selected tasks and thereby becomes 
able to originate tool processes to fit new require- 
ments. In practical industrial employment we call 
the workman who has this knowledge of principles 



IN EDUCATION 7 

an adaptable workman. He is really a scientist and 
if a master of the science, is substantially unlimited 
in the variety of work he can accomplish. 

At the present time most of the school shopwork 
is the teaching of processes, sometimes with good 
workmanship resulting and sometimes not, but in 
either case the value of the instruction to the pupil 
and the community is very slight and sometimes, 
possibly often, of a serious negative value. 

Such instruction is sustained not by its value 
but by those students of a strong scientific type of 
mind who get some of the science in spite of the 
tendency of the instruction. The 3;Iechanical Sci- 
ence work differs from these other systems in that 
it recognizes that there is a science of working solid 
materials and strives definitely to teach it by the 
use of suitable subject matter. 

These articles, written in 1909, took what was 
then an advanced position in regard to fitting 
pupils to enter with success any one of a variety 
of occupations without any special training for 
any one occupation. Since then the actual expe- 
riences of those who have entered upon various 
lines of industrial activities after a more or less 
extended training in Mechanical Science have con- 
firmed this theory beyond any probability of error. 
These pupils have established records of indus- 
trial efficiency and success beyond that which the 
author expected, and greatly in excess of what is 



8 MECHANICAL SCIENCE 

necessary to establish this theory. The greatest 
need in educational work today is not more theories 
in regard to what ought to -be done but more 
careful inquiry in regard to what is actually being 
accomplished by some schools. 

The fact should not be overlooked that there is 
not one bit of evidence from any source that can 
be placed against this system of school shopwork. 
The fact that pupils from schools having practically 
unlimited resources in equipment and salaries have 
not shown this adaptability cannot be used against 
this system, for equipment and salaries do not, at 
this time, guarantee the teaching of the science. 
A thoro investigation will show that some of the 
largest and most expensively conducted manual 
training schools or industrial arts schools are giving 
the poorest instruction as estimated from the 
standpoint of teaching the science. 



CONTENTS 

Preface 3 

Manual Training a Science 11 

The Subject Matter of Manual Training 19 

The Attitude of Pupils 25 

Manual Training and Industrj^ 33 

Methods of Instruction 45 

Our Duty Toward the Manual 

Training Movement 59 

German Schools and Our Problem 71 

What is a Liberal Education 99 

Problems in the Successful Teaching 

of Mechanical Science 127 

Manual Training Equipment 139 



Manual Training 
a Science 



It is natural for us, when the country is stirred 
by some new movement, to look for the cause. To 
find the cause and recognize it is not always an easy 
matter. It is usually found in a combination of 
conditions that differ in their relations from those 
ordinarily existing, and therefore requires a point of 
view difiicult to assume by those not thoroly ex- 
perienced in the new field of observation. That the 
introduction of tool work into the common schools 
has brought under observation a line of work re- 
quiring a point of view not easily gained by those 
accustomed to pass judgment upon our school work 
is easily believed because of the greatly varying 
opinions and suggestions which are given out as a 
result of those observations. It does not seem 
probable that in this new line of work there is no 
basis on which a definite theory can be placed. The 
present difficulty appears to be the all but universal 
difficulty of those long accustomed to a certain line 
of investigation failing to grasp the whole body of 
facts bearing upon the new situation. 



12 MECHANICAL SCIENCE 



A Paradox 

So universal is the necessity for ja new point of 
observation in the proper study and an intelligent 
discussion of great advances in civilization that, 
however paradoxical this may seem, it is, never- 
theless, apt to be true that those having the most ex- 
tensive training for the purpose of observing and 
judging of sociological conditions are unable to give 
to the community a full and correct statement of 
the value of any radically new movement in society. 
The work of the trained investigator appears to be 
to refine and diffuse after the radical changes have 
produced a sufficient body of material to make pos- 
sible a new point of observation. 

In no line of modern development is this more 
noticeable than in the movement for a department 
of school work capable of giving a larger value for 
those whose life's work is to be spent in some line of 
industry. If we will pause to consider what the 
new material is that is of necessity being brought 
into our schools as a result of this demand, \Ye will 
have no reason to question this statement. 

Lack of Information 

Turn to any discussion of industrial education 
by those considered best able to lead in educational 



' IN EDUCATION 18 

investigation and we find the point of view sub- 
stantially the same. Trained to a degree that 
should give them large confidence in their powers, 
rightly credited by all with a breadth of learning, 
strong in power to think out to infinitesimal distinc- 
tions along lines with which they are familiar, it is 
not surprising that they do not realize, nor should 
we censure them for not realizing, that they have 
lived and thought apart from a vast body of learning 
which is capable of supplying material for not only 
an education for industry, but also material for 
liberal culture. 

To those that have lived long in the realm of 
books, without dealing with any line of thought to 
be tested out by actual working of solid materials, 
there is another world about them unseen and un- 
felt, and neither considered in their observations 
and search for the cause of present unrest, nor in 
shaping their plans for the uplift of the industrial 
classes. 

To make this other world real to those who hold 
in their hands the destiny of education is the burden 
of those w^ho live in this other world, and whose 
lives have been such as to give them a view of the 
intellectual side of modern industrv. 



14 MECHANICAL SCIENCE 



Learning by Thinking 

"We learn to do by doing/' said by some one, 
and quoted by the millions, has so impressed itself 
upon this generation as to be taken as a fact, tho, as 
ordinarily interpreted, it is little else than fiction. 

For untold centuries the world progressed, if we 
can call that slow and tedious advance in mechanical 
work progression, by doing; and, had not the in- 
creasing necessities of the increased density of popu- 
lation and the comparing of methods as a result of 
the intermingling of nationalities caused a change 
from the learning to do by doing to the learning to 
do by thinking, we would yet be using the mechan- 
ical appliances of medieval civilization. From the 
doing and doing over and over to get the ''knack" 
or learn to imitate, the industrial advance has led to 
the thinking out of principles making the doing not 
the learning, but the test of the thinking which has 
preceded. This gives a foundation for growth ; for 
there is no limit to the mind's activity. The hand- 
ing down from generation to generation of tool 
processes or trade maniuplations gradually ceases to 
be a factor and more and more each generation fits 
for work by the applying of principles, disregarding 
the details of imitation. This gives freedom and 
the era of invention is a necessary consequence. No 
child feels obliged to do just as his parent did. He 



IN EDUCATION 15 

has learned a principle on which the operation or 
process is based and feels free to make use of any 
muscular movement that does not do violence to the 
principle. The working out of these principles also 
eliminates many operations of the ancient crafts- 
man because they are not in harmony with es- 
tablished law. 

Source of Progress 

The development of the science of working solid 
materials not only gives freedom to use a large va- 
riety of processes or methods, but also is quite as 
useful in ehminating many methods of work which 
have come down to us by rule of thumb or blind 
imitation, and which are neither efficient nor in- 
tellectual. 

This not only leads to progress in industry, but 
also to the building up of an intellectual side to in- 
dustrial work. It is because of this change from 
imitative methods to those resulting from a study of 
the underlying principles of industrial work that 
modern industry has made so rapid an advance, has 
become so intensive, and has made the better classes 
of workmen intelligent members of society. It is 
this side of the work that gives to it its place in the 
schools, and it is the failing to recognize this that 
makes the present discussion of manual training 
lead into so many vagaries and the work of so many 



16 MECHANICAL SCIENCE 

schools fail to produce the desired results in the in- 
dustrial efficiency of their pupils. 

Why They Fail 

Observing the physical side of the work, and not 
having gone deeply into the study of the science un- 
derlying industrial pursuits, those who are in a 
position to do much good fail to give material aid 
because from their position of observation they are 
unable to see that there is a science underlying the 
working of solid materials, a science which, tho in 
its first stages of development, is yet sufficiently well 
defined to supply the material for our school shops, 
or that part of our school work leading to the in- 
dustries. 

When this fact is realized and we proceed to 
base our school shop work on science instead of tool 
processes, history, art, or what-not, there will be no 
call for specialization in the grades, and possibly not 
in the high school, nor will there be any need to 
separate those expecting to enter industrial lines 
from those fitting for the professions, because the 
study of the science of working solid materials is 
^ quite as valuable a part of a liberal education as the 
study of any other science. Nor will there be any 
necessity for the introduction of matter foreign to 
the study of this science to give either interest or 
cultural value. All attempts to make of the school 



IN EDUCAITON 17 

shop a study of things other than the science of 
working solid materials are abortive and an ac- 
knowledgment that the real subject matter has been 
overlooked. 



Our Duty 

Our present duty is to all pull together to gather 
the necessary material for the thoro establishing of 
this science, to eliminate the unscientific, the work 
that is based upon imitation, and the work that 
leads only to disconnected facts or details, to try 
thoroly each statement of principle as to its truth, 
and then as to its use as a part of a broad foundation 
for industrial work. 

By pursuing this course we can soon have such a 
valuable science as a basis for all industrial lines that 
the pupil, on leaving school, will be as reasonably as- 
sured of success in any industry as he now is in 
other lines. He will not only be free to enter any 
one of many occupations, but also will have a 
breadth of foundation that will serve him well in 
case at some time circumstances necessitate his 
changing from his chosen line to a widely differing 
one. 

Viewed as a part of a liberal education, manual 
training is that branch of school work in which the 
mental acLivity of the pupil is tested by work upon 
solid materials. 



The Subject Matter of 
Manual Training 



To know that manual training is a science is but 
the beginning of the work necessary to its establish- 
ing as a part of our school work. Those who are 
familiar with the history of the introduction and de- 
velopment of mathematics, physics and chemistry 
as parts of our school course have a basis for com- 
parison in anticipating the nature of the task before 
those working for a rational course in manual train- 
ing, or mechanical science. The latter term seems 
to indicate very clearly the nature of this division of 
educational work, and I think we may use it until a 
better name is found. 



Apparatus and Principles 

The first and obvious conclusion after we learn 
that it is a science is that this material is in the 
realm of law or principle rather than in physical 
form. Altho, like physics, mechanical science re- 
quires for its convenient study a quantity of ap- 
paratus, yet, like physics, this apparatus is not the 



20 MECHANICAL SCIENCE 

science, but the means of demonstrating it. The 
bench, the lathe, the chisel, plane, and saw are not 
implements to be manipulated for the purpose of the 
manipulation ; but pieces of apparatus to be used in 
certain definite ways, so that a law or principle may 
be learned or demonstrated. The work of the shop 
is not to learn a series of physical movements, but to 
make use of certain carefully selected movements in 
order to learn fundamental principles that may be 
used in the determining of a variety of movements. 
The inclined plane and balls in the physics 
laboratory are not fdx the purrose of giving skill in 
rolling balls, but to afford an opportunity to roll 
balls in such a way as to demonstrate the laws of 
falling bodies. One who has no knowledge of the 
physical sciences might roll balls all his days, even 
until he became more skilled in handling tlieni than 
the student or teacher of physics ; and yet never even 
so much as surmise that there are any iav/s of falling 
bodies. In like manner the imitative mechanic ma}^ 
use the tools of the trades all his life and never dis- 
cover that there are any S'-^ientific principles in or 
back of these movements of tools. In fact, a care- 
ful scrutiny of men at work v/iil reveal that herein 
lies a great deal of the differcn-e between workmen, 
one working blindly to ^'get the kiiack,'^ to practice 
until he "catches on,'' to ''keep tiying until he gets 
it," to ''develop skill" and tlieotherworkingthought- 
fuUy, making use of such principles as rio has been 



IN EDUCATION 21 

able to discover. It is the principles worked out by 
individual workmen and tben gathered into a course 
that give a basis for our manual training or me- 
chanical science work, just as the gathering together 
of the laws worked out by various students of 
natural philosophy has given us the science of 
physics. 

The Selection of Materials 

The gathering together of this more or less crude 
material is but the start in getting the subject mat- 
ter for a school course in mechanical science. To 
yield a proper return for time and effort and the 
large expense usually incident to the teaching of 
shop work the material must be thoroly sifted, 
classified and worked over to yield the largest pos- 
sible value for the outlay. This process of elimin- 
ation and refining has no Hmit so long as the race 
progresses, and therefore our subject matter can not 
become a fixed quantity. All we can do is to be 
certain that we have the best obtainable at the pres- 
ent time. 

This naturally leads us to surmise that certain 
lines of mechanical work will yield better material 
than others, because some lines have received a 
larger amount of intellectual effort. I think ob- 
servation bears out this suspicion, and that a thoro 
study of modern industries will convince us that 



22 MECHANICAL SCIENCE 

some occupations are much farther advanced than 
others; that some are well established on scientific 
principles, while others are yet in the stage of crafts- 
manship. Therefore ,we must find our subject mat- 
ter in those industries that are highly developed, or, 
in other words, those industries that have a basis in 
scientific tool usage rather than in imitative process- 
es or craftsmanship. 

ElimiDatiDg the Unscientific 

But this is not all. In the present state of de- 
velopment no industry is entirely scientific, nor is 
any modern industry entirely lacldng in scientific 
principles. It is therefore a most difficult task and a 
matter of the most serious importance, after we have 
determined what lines of work to make use of in our 
schools, to select from each fine or trade that which 
is scientific and eliminate that which is not. 

To introduce woodwork or any other of the high- 
ly developed occupations may mean the study of 
scientific principles of large application and great 
value; or it may mean simply the making of a few 
articles and the establishing of habits of work that 
will hinder rather than help, should the pupil at- 
tempt work in any indr.stry. 

Our subject matter cannot be selected by trades 
or groups, but must be determined by a rigid test to 
exclude that wliich is not scientific. Even after we 



IN EDUCATION 23 

have found that part which is scientific we have not 
done all possible, for even then there is opportunity 
for choice. Some of the principles may be of larger 
value than others, and if we will do that which is 
best we must make use of those things of largest 
value. 

Universality of Principles 

In our study to determine those principles of 
largest value we discover that many of the prin- 
ciples are not confined in their application to any 
one trade or occupation, but that they are of such 
broad application that when learned in one material 
they are easily applied to other materials, even with- 
out any study in school of the other material. We 
find that altho the tools and appliances used in the 
various industries differ widely, yet the principles 
governing their use are all but universal. 

This relieves out* school shops of all necessity of 
specialization or the use of detailed subject matter 
of special trades until these general principles have 
been learned. Such a division of the work is not 
only unnecessary, but is actually injurious to both 
the course and the pupil, for it tends to place in the 
course details not worth the time to learn and also to 
rob the pupil by crowding out the study of general 
principles which have a value as a part of a liberal 
education. 



24 MECHANICAL SCIENCE 

Therefore our subject matter for manual training 
is that part of the knowledge of working solid ma- 
terials that is based upon scientific principles of the 
largest value, and the work of our school shops is the 
doing of such things as will best demonstrate and 
teach those principles. 



The Attitude of Pupils 



In any line of work, either in school or out, the 
attitude of the worker has much to do with the re- 
sult. Altho this may be of no more consequence in 
manual training than in other branches, so greatly 
do the pupils vary in their reasons for taking up this 
work and in their attitude towards it, that the mat- 
ter of attitude becomes an element of chief impor- 
tance. It not only has much to do with the methods 
of instruction, but also with the selection of ma- 
terial; the position of the branch in the course and 
its rank as a factor of a liberal education. The 
attitude of the pupil may determine whether the 
shop work is a part of a well organized course giving 
a liberal education or a ''patch on an over-crowded 
curriculum." 

What Should He Think About? 

As a pupil takes up his plane or other tool, or a 
bit of material, what should he be thinking about? 
This may appear to be a trivial question. The 
answers to it vary greatly as given by different in- 
structors. One pupil receives a bit of wood and at 
once a vision of a rule, plant stick, or other object 



26 MECHANICAL SCIENCE 

appears. Another pupil receives a similar piece 
and at once the word ' Vood" is suggested. This is 
followed by visions of lumber piles and perhaps 
trees. Such a train of thought may continue until 
the pupil is day-dreaming of some trip to the woods. 
It may recall the pleasures of tree-climbing until the 
piece of material in his hands, tools, bench and 
school shop are all forgotten and he is mentally in 
the top of some tree. Another pupil with his piece 
of wood in hand thinks neither of wood, lumber, 
trees or plant stick, but recalls some similar task and 
begins to plan how he may use what he learned in 
the former task in accomplishing this one. I ven- 
ture to say that if we could read the minds of the 
pupils in some manual training classes, we would find 
some in trees, some using their plant sticks in flower 
gardens, and very few, if any, actually engaged in 
the thoughtful use of the tools required to make the 
desired piece. 

Are these the correct places for their minds? Are 
these pupils, whose minds are away from the bench, 
gaining what they ought from the work? Perhaps 
some will hold the opinion that the manual training 
class is the place in which pupils are to proceed to 
the ends of the earth while their hands are absent- 
mindedly pushing a file or drawing a spoke shave. 
If this is the proper attitude, then what is the actual 
value of the tool work? Why are the pupils given 
tools at all? 



IN EDUCATION 27 

Movements Should Be Definitely Directed 

The merest novice in physical culture would not 
expect to get results worth while by muscular move- 
ments not definitely directed. Can we expect in 
the work shop to get intellectual results from such 
movements? We certainly do not consider a move- 
ment of the hand or arm definitely directed, when 
the thought is only to get something done. To get 
something done may lead to the employment of an- 
other person to do it. The boy who wants a plant 
stick may get it by stealing, buying it or by hiring 
some one to make it, or by loafing about until he is 
given one. Any of these methods may get the plant 
stick. It is evident that if he is to make the stick, 
another element is essential and that element is the 
method of making; but to recognize that there is this 
other step is not all. A boy may want the object, 
recognize that work is necessary, and that it is all to 
a good purpose, and yet fail entirely to get the in- 
tellectual benefit from the muscular movements. He 
must go a step further and recognize the fact that 
there is a definite way in which to proceed, and that 
only by use of these definite methods can he get the 
best results in grade of work and time. There is 
yet another step: He must recognize the fact that 
these definite things are essential and must be 
learned, not gained by imitation. They must be to 
him real intellectual activities, not muscular move- 
ments copied from another. They must be things 



28 MECHANICAL SCIENCE 

for his mind to do, not muscular reactions for his 
hands and arms only. When this step is taken the 
shop work ceases to be so largely a physical activity, 
the physical side being akin to the chalk, blackboard 
and muscular part of working a problem or the use 
of apparatus in demonstrating principles in the 
physics laboratory. 



Every Movement a Victory 

The mind is no longer a '"silent partner" in the 
work, but is actively planning and directing each 
movement; it ceases to look for operations to be 
imitated, reasoning out from what has been learned, 
methods applicable to the present task. The pupil 
ceases to ask how, rather asking why. This gives to 
every task a definite intellectual content, rendering 
the pupil capable of taking an invoice of each day's 
recitation, and instead of the dead subject of tool 
operations, requiring a taboret to get them done, 
the work becomes full of life. Every movement of a 
tool is a victory in the demonstrating of some prin- 
ciple in which the pupil has become deeply interest- 
ed. He no longer thinks of the object, but of the 
thing he is learning, for he realizes that there is 
something to learn and that da}^ by day he is making 
definite progress and gaining in abihty to do really 
difficult work. 



IN EDUCATION 29 



Desire for Power a Controlling Force 

Emerson tells us, ''Life is a search after power.'' 
Altho each of us might choose to express this idea in 
a different form, yet we all recognize that the great 
moving force in all human activity is a desire for 
power, not the use of power to oppress, not the use 
of power to plunder, not the use of power to gather 
everything into one's own storehouses, but the reali- 
zation of power within. The power will be used in 
different ways by different people according to their 
moral control, or training, but the fundamental 
desire for a realization of power is the same in all. 

We must not fail to distinguish between the con- 
dition of possessing power that is not realized, a false 
belief in the possession of power, and the actual pos- 
session of power which is fully and definitely re- 
alized. Herein lies one of the chief values of shop 
work when properly taught, for in few, if in any 
other subjects, is it possible to give such exact tests 
for the purpose of ca-ising a correct estimation and 
realization of the pupil's strength and growth from 
day to day. 

Not only should the teacher strive to gain this 
attitude on the part of the pupil, but realizing the 
hp.rm which may come from a false estimate of one's 
capabilities, no effort should be spared to so arrange 
the work that a true estimate will be gained. A 



30 MECHANICAL SCIENCE 

false estimate may be established and pupils may be 
made to believe that they are learning and accom- 
plishing that which is building them up in power 
to do the world's work, but such a false estimate is 
sure to be discovered should the pupil attempt the 
practical application of his acquisitions. 

A Change in Methods 

That such has been the case in some sections is 
evident from the reports of pupils failing to ''make 
good" after leaving school. This has caused a 
change in the courses in some schools with a change 
in the attitude of the pupils. The impossibility of 
continuing to gain the attitude of study, because of 
former pupils failing to use usccessfully their school 
shop training, leads to various expedients to con- 
tinue an interest which has lost its vitahzing force 
and the shop becomes a place to do or study a va- 
riety of things not capable of the exact tests, and 
knowledge for which the mxanual training schools 
were originally established. 

Let Us Acknowledge Our Failure 

Is it not better to frankly acknowledge our 
failure to teach correctly the things we have at- 
tempted and begin sifting and improving the sub- 
ject matter until we can teach fundamental prin- 



IN EDUCATION 31 

ciples of industrial work, striving for an attitude of 
study and desire for growth on the part of the pupils, 
rather than to bring in matters foreign to the manual 
training work and gain a false interest in the shops 
of the regular schools, making necessary the es- 
tablishing of variously named schools to give the 
advantages that, with properly taught shop classes, 
could easily be given in the regular schools? 

To secure this attitude of study on the part of 
the pupil, should be a controlling factor in the or- 
ganization and teaching of the shop work. It should 
determine the first lesson and make it of such a na- 
ture that the pupil will see in the shop work a means 
of gaining power and fix the mental attitude not 
upon acquisiton of material things, but upon the 
increase of power which results from a definite 
realization that every stroke of the plane means 
not alone a trued surface, but increased power to 
true a surface; that every nail driven means not 
alone a bit of work completed, but an increase of 
power to do work. When finally the surface is 
trued, the attitude should be not that of a disagree- 
able task done for the purpose of a true surface or a 
plant stick, but a realization of power gained, and a 
wish for more surfaces to true. 

The warrior who sat down and wept for more 
worlds to conquer had simply taken a course on a 
large scale in the gaining of power. 1 am not in 
sympathy with the subject matter of his course, but 



32 MECHANICAL SCIENCE 

I do admire his attitude toward his work. Give 
to the boy or girl the manual training work with 
hammer and saw, instead of aword and spear, so 
that they will gain the same attitude because of 
each day having a definite realization of increas- 
ing power, and there will be no lack of properly 
qualified hands to do the world's work, either 
mechanical or professional. Degrade the work by 
making it a task for a prize, whether it be a card, 
a medal or a taboret, and your pupils will go out 
into the activities of life, not looking for opportu- 
nities to u se their strength, but inquiring by what 
means a taboret can be most easily obtained. 



Manual Training and Industry 



We come now to a very important part of the 
manual training problem, for, altho manual training 
is believed by many to be equal in rank as a fac- 
tor of a liberal education to any of the old line sub- 
jects, yet in the final test it will undoubtedly stand 
because of its industrial worth, or fall because it 
does not demonstrate its special value for those who 
engage in some branch of manufacturing. It is well, 
therefore, to consider carefully each detail of the 
work that we may give to the school shop the largest 
possible industrial value consistent with this branch 
being a part of a course yielding a hberal education. 
We may discover that when the work is properly 
taught there will be no conflict between the indus- 
trial and educational values. 

In developing a branch that differs in so many 
ways from those considered as fixed subjects of our 
school course, it is not easy to determine what its 
scope shall be to yield the results desired. In fact 
there is not yet a unanimous agreement as to what 
ought to result from the teaching of shopwork in 
the public schools. At the present time we may 
profitably consider both that which is needed to fit 
the pupils to do the work of a tradesman as at 



84 MECHANICAL SCIENCE 

present carried on and also that which will best lead 
toward ideal efficiency and the highest type of 
manhood and citizenship. 

Two Factors Necessary 

Two factors are necessary for the highest type of 
workman aside from general intelligence. First is 
conapetency to do the work. Second, often of as 
much importance as the first, is adaptability, the 
power by which the workman is able to change 
employment with a minimum of loss, both to himself 
and to his employer. This change may be for the 
purpose of developing a new line of work without 
change of employer, or it may be a change from 
one establishment to another. The first factor may 
result from long experience with limited intellec- 
tual activity. The latter can come only thru a 
thoro knowledge of the principles common to a 
variety of occupations. 

Industrial education cannot wait for the devel- 
opment of some theory, but must show some results 
worth while as the theories are being worked out. 
Neither can we expect the pubhc to tolerate ex- 
perimenting, based only on the theories developed 
apart from the actual activities of occupational life. 
We should, however, aim not simply at the produc- 
tion of a class of workmen on the level of present 
industrial life, but ought rather to strive for the 



IN EDUCATION 85 

advancement of the work to the best system of 
production, and the advancement of the worker to 
the largest efficiency and highest type of workman. 

Great Diversity of Industries 

We may gain information to guide us in plan- 
ning our new line of school work by a study of in- 
dustrial life. Such an investigation leads at once 
to the observation that our industries comprise 
an extremely wide range of activities. It is, there- 
fore, necessary to decide whether a pupil should 
be fitted for only one industry or given a training 
that will make possible the successful entering of 
any of a large class of industries. 

Should we attempt to fit for a single ih'dustry, 
we meet the serious difficulty of various practices 
in identically the same line of work. Many illustra- 
tions can be given to prove this point. The follow- 
ing statement in a technical periodical is sufficient : 
"It is always interesting to note the various ways in 
which the same class of material is handled in differ- 
ent shops. Of course, this difference is sometimes a 
case of necessity rather than choice, as a shop is 
often originally planned and equipped for an entire- 
ly different class of work from that for which it is 
finally used, but even where shops have been fitted 
up expressly for certain similar lines of work, the 
divergence in methods or tools is often very marked." 



36 MECHANICAL SCIENCE 

This variety in methods in the same industry as 
well as the great diversity of industries, is a factor 
to be reckoned with in every community attempt- 
ing any sort of specialization in the schools. So 
evident is this multiplicity of trades and occupations 
that it seems that those who believe the schools can 
fit for individual trades have the burden of proof on 
their hands, and until there is a reasonable proof 
that the communities can be generally accommo- 
dated by such schools, we may reasonably assume 
that the public school cannot develop a line of 
trade schools sufficiently comprehensive and diver- 
sified to accommodate the public as a whole. 

Even if by application of the rule of the greatest 
good to the greatest number, we succeed in estab- 
lishing trade schools in various communities, each 
acconmiodating the leading occupations of its com- 
munity or city, are we doing the best for the com- 
munity as a whole? Can any division of our popu- 
lation receive the best that is its due if the boys 
and girls are born to an occupation as must necessa- 
rily follow such a community specialization? 

Two Types of Workmen 

A further evidence of this variety in shop detail 
and the inefficiency of simple trade instruction is 
shown by the different degrees of success met with 
by men as they move from one shop to another. 



IN EDUCATION 37 

Some change from place to place, each time advanc- 
ing in their work; others, on leaving the shop where 
they first learned their work or trade, find them- 
selves unable to meet the conditions of the new place. 
They are obliged to begin again, making little use 
of their first training. A thorough study of these 
types of workmen reveals that one has been ever a 
student of principles, the other has worked just as 
hard learning tool manipulations and may be fairly 
capable of stud3dng the work in the other manner, 
if properly directed. Shall the school courses be 
organized on the plan of actual shop life, permit- 
ting each pupil to progress under instruction similar 
to that of actual apprenticeship training, teaching 
tool manipulations and processes with only the ex- 
ceptional pupil gaining a knowledge of principles? 
Or, is the work to be made a real school subject and 
handled according to well established pedagogical 
laws so that every pupil will be led into the broader 
field of trade work? 

In determining the name and character of our 
schools, we must not overlook the fact that a school 
may be called a trade school and yet do much more 
than teach a trade or a certain number of trades 
and also that a school may be named the very op^ 
posite of a trade school and yet teach only trade 
manipulations of very limited value. Excellent 
illustrations of this statement are to be found in 
some of our most prominent schools. 



38 MECHANICAL SCIENCE 



School Shops Should not Drill for Skill 

To treat the shop work of the school as crafts- 
manship, drilling for skill in some special line, or in 
certain selected tool manipulations, whether from 
one trade or from several trades, is to turn out a 
class of pupils of more or less efficiency with but a 
small percentage capable of adapting themselves to 
a sufficiently wide range of occupations to insure 
more than ordinary success, and this is now gained 
by a large number of boys without the advantage 
of a mechanical school. Unless the school shop can 
show returns exceeding, to a considerable extent, 
the ordinary conditions of training, there will be 
great difficulty in sustaining them at public expense. 
That pupils may receive some advantage because 
of opportunities to learn drawing, mathematics, etc., 
and because of this show themselves superior to 
the ordinary shop apprentice, is no excuse for not 
giving the best possible shop training. 

In our enthusiasm, we ought not to overlook 
the fact that there are several things that may in- 
crease the standing of the young mechanic. If a 
boy who has completed a certain course goes into 
a factory and is advanced over boys who have had 
substantially no schooling, it does not prove that 
every branch of the course has been what it ought 
to have been, or even helpful. In so large a number 



IN EDUCATION 39 

of subjects, the sum total may be helpful while 
some of the factors are decidedly harmful. It is not 
a question of making one boy better than another, 
but rather of making each boy the best possible 

Strive for Larger Things 

It, therefore, appears that if the school shop is 
to give results to warrant its cost, it must turn to 
the larger successes of trade life, a large percentage 
of those who pursue its courses. This does not 
mean that they are to train for foremen, superin- 
endents, or other executive positions, but that they 
are to give to a large percentage of pupils such a 
training as will lead them to a thoro knowledge of 
the principles underlying the every day details of 
work, and because of this, to use a high degree of 
intelligence in their common occupations. This 
does not mean that the special aim of the manual 
training school is to make of the boy an intellectual 
citizen. This is already accomplished by the old 
line subjects. The special feature to be added by 
this new line of school work is the making of his 
daily labors such as will require and continually 
build up his intellectual activities. This necessitates 
not simply the teaching of the boy to do a certain 
line of work, but rather the teaching him to do his 
work in such a manner as will cause a large use of 
his mind and consequent grow^th of intelligence. 



40 MECHANICAL SCIENCE 

Shopwork in school is not so much for the pur- 
pose of teaching tool work as for the purpose of 
improving the intellectual and manhood factors in 
the work. In one sense, its purpose is similar to 
that of teaching literature. That is taught not for 
the purpose of teaching reading but for the purpose 
of getting out of reading that which will build up 
the larger and higher intellectual activities. Shop 
work should be taught not simply to make the 
pupils work, but for the purpose of getting out of 
work the highest and noblest that is possible. 

Make the Workman Intellectual 

We must not forget that a higher grade of intelli- 
gence can be maintained only by making the work of 
a more intellectual nature. To attempt to lift the 
workman by patching on to his education a little 
superficial knowledge of various outside lines, of 
*' culture" or by teaching him a lot of details in his 
own trade which he is not likely to use while leaving 
him to do his daily tasks by blind imitation and the 
muscular reactions which result from skill alone, is 
to fail in our efforts to elevate the tone of industrial 
life ; for, unless we train the workman so that his mind 
is built up by the work on which he is daily engaged, 
his power to benefit by extraneous training is sooner 
or later lost because of the impossibility of a mind 
more or less dormant through the active working 



IN EDUCATION 41 

hours continuing to respond to outside influences. 
Industrial education should aim to make the 
task of the industrial worker as highly intellectual 
as possible, replacing in a continually greater de- 
gree, ^'rule of thumb" and imitative methods by 
the highly developed scientific methods of modern 
mechanical science. It should mean not simply more 
boys entering industrial lines, but also a larger in- 
telligence in industrial work. It should mean a 
constantly increasing number of workmen that put 
independent intellectual activity behind the routine 
and muscle of their daily tasks. 

Makes Labor Honorable. 

If the work of the tradesman is given the 
intellectual basis which it ought to have, there 
will be no lack of those to enter these lines, for 
such a foundation for the work must necessarily 
give it a standing and respect before all that 
will tend to make honorable the entering upon 
the life of a scientific worker in materials. To say 
that all work is honorable and try to create a 
respect for labor by having pupils perform certain 
tasks having some of the characteristics of daily 
toil is only to burlesque the whole matter. Take 
away from the commonly called lowly occupations 
of mankind, the long hours, the continued routine, 
the special conditions under which the laborer exists 



42 MECHANICAL SCIENCE 

and the necessity for labor and they cease to be lowly 
occupations. None of these conditions of the 
laborer are possible in any sort of a free public ed- 
ucational institution. On the other hand, make the 
laborer a student of the laws governing his work, 
cause the whole community to realize that there is 
a foundation in law capable of being treated as a 
science for all the laborer does and that he actually 
knows this science and is governed by it in his daily 
work, and he becomes a respected member of society 
because the intellectual obscures the physical. 
Allow the intellectual to subside and the physical 
to predominate and that man enters again the ranks 
of the ''toilers." Respect is of the mind and its ap- 
preciation is for that which shows mental power. 

Not a 'Tad:' 

This we believe is the ideal aim of shop work at 
public expense. If so, it is neither a fad nor a patch 
upon the public curriculum, but the legitimate 
result of that advance in mechanical work which 
has changed the working of solid materials from cut 
and try and imitative methods to those based upon 
scientific principles. It is not the forcing into the 
schools of matter outside the legitimate lines of 
public school work, but rather the reaching out of 
the schools for a new and advanced line of intellec- 
tual activity to give to the curriculum a yet stronger 



IN EDUCATION 43 

and more efficient means of supplying to all a 
liberal education. 

And why may not this be the aim of this new 
branch of school work? No shadow of evidence 
exists showing that by striving for the larger values 
we will lose any of the lesser advantages. No more 
equipment is required, no longer hours are needed. 
No less interest in the work and no less usefulness 
can be the result on leaving school. 

Boys and girls who have learned to put intell- 
igence into the common tasks of life can do them 
quite as quickly and as well — we do not need to 
argue that they can do them better — while over and 
above all they can live better lives as common 
workers, and, should opportunity offer, they are 
ready to do something larger for the benefit of them- 
selves and the community that fitted them broadly 
for a life's work. 



Methods of Instruction 



Following our inquiry in regard to the nature 
of manual training, the subject matter of instruc- 
tion, the attitude of the pupil in the classroom, and 
the relation of manual training work to the indus- 
trial world, naturally arises the question of actual 
classroom methods in such a system of manual 
training. It is not necessary that at this time we 
enter into a consideration of the datails of class- 
room practice, but rather touch upon some of the 
more important features that distinguish scientific 
manual traning or mechanical science from that of 
trade instruction or craftsmanship. 

To those who look upon the shop work as nec- 
essarily a sort of recreation period, the teaching of a 
science with the pupils hard at work studying a text 
book and working to demonstrate principles, seems 
an impossibility, yet this is what actually takes place 
where scientific manual training is properly taught. 
Methods that will give this result are not so dif- 
ficult as some suppose, as has been demonstrated. 

That the attitude of the teachers and their know- 
ledge of the work has much to do with the methods 
of instruction is too well understood by all school 
people to require any argument. We will assume 



46 MECHANICAL SCIENCE 

that the instructor is fully prepared and thoroughly 
in earnest. That such instructors cannot be found 
at present for all schools need not be considered in 
this connection. 

Lessons Should Be Definite. 

The first thing that the pupil is to take away 
with him is a definite feeling that he has learned 
something. Therefore the first lesson should be 
planned with a definite idea in it that is within the 
reach of the pupil. The instructor must ever keep 
in mind that the thing he is teaching is not history, 
botany, physics or even mechanical engineering, but 
the science of working solid materials, and must 
therefore use such methods as will draw upon this 
science for the ideas to be taught. This does not 
hinder such a consideration and correlation of other 
branches as may be gathered around the mechanical 
science with it as a center and basis for the whole. 

The giving of this definite idea in the first lesson 
necessarily compels a very careful planning of the 
lesson, not only to be sure that the idea is in the les- 
son, but also that the pupil will actually get the 
idea instead of doing the work by blind imitation 
of certain muscular movements. This difficulty is 
akin to that of getting the pupil to understand a rule 
in mathematics, a proposition in geometry or a law 
in physics rather then merely committing the words 



IN EDUCATION 47 

by rote. The instruction of the shop, however, has 
a great advantage over that of any other branch, 
because it is possible here to make the demonstra- 
tion so vivid that an attempt to do the work by 
blind imitation is sure not only to be discovered by 
the instructor, but also to be reaHzed by the pupil 
to such an extent as will compel a study and under- 
standing of the idea behind the movement of hand or 
tool. Therefore one of the most important things 
is to start out in a manner to gain this study of the 
principles to avoid the doing of the work by imita- 
tion. 

Limit of Accuracy. 

Questioning should be the plan of instruction 
rather than telling. Working for a knowledge of 
the principles rather than grade of work should be 
the aim. The degree of accuracy to be required 
will than be determined by whether the point be- 
ing taught is well understood. To reach a close 
measurement or to keep the corners and edges sharp 
is not a matter of skill but of knowledge of princi- 
ples. To have a certain fraction of an inch as a 
standard to w^ork to is certain to defeat the purpose 
of the work, for this leads the pupil to employ any 
method that will bring the material within the al- 
lowed variations. To have no standard other than 
the demonstrating of the principle must necessarily 



48 MECHANICAT SCIENCE 

result in a large percentage of the work being brot 
to a very much higher degree of perfection than 
it would be safe to place as an arbitrary limit, at 
the same time leaving an opportunity for the passing 
of particular pieces that for special reasons are not 
as accurate as usually required. It is the same in 
principle as expecting absolute accuracy in arithme- 
tic with the occasional accepting of a problem in 
which all the chief operations and principles are 
correct but the answer out because of a slight error 
in a minor operation. That this method in shop 
work does actually result in a high degree of ac- 
curacy is evidenced by the fact that teachers using 
the set standrad of a certain fraction of an inch are 
unable to understand how the pupils in scientific 
manual training work to such close limits. 

Again, this standard of excellence is not to be 
determined and attained by a continued criticising 
and compelling of the pupil to go over and o\'er his 
work correcting little errors pointed out by the in- 
structor, but rather it must be attained by a definite 
working to a satisfactory standard by the application 
of the principles taught. It must be the direct 
and legitimate result of the application of the prin- 
ciples without the aid of the instructor in pointing 
out small variations. 

A shop method that permJts a pupil to hesi- 
tatingly work first to an approximate size and then 
rework and rework, gradually approaching the line, 



IN EBUGATION 49 

is as pernicious in the shop as the writing of an 
answer to a problem in arithmetic and then guess- 
ing and trying to fill in the various operations. 

The principle should be understood as a result 
of a step by step progress from the known to the un- 
known, and the result in the shop should be as cer- 
tain and direct as the solving of a problem in math- 
ematics. There must also be this advantage in the 
shop work, i. e., each problem must be so graded and 
adapted to the pupil that a reasonable effort will 
result in a correct solution. This of course ex- 
cludes from the shop all wild, half thought out sche- 
mes of the pupils. In fact, proper methods of shop 
work will result in the pupil asking advice of the in- 
structor for the purpose of selecting a project that 
will be of large value in what it will teach rather 
than in filling some material want. Probably in no 
other feature of the shop work is it so difficult for 
the layman to distinguish between that which tends 
to scientific manual training and that which does 
not as in the larger problems or projects. 

The "Cants" 

The boy who ^' can't" or knows he "can't" should 
be taken in hand and made ta see so clearly that he 
can if he will study his text; that he will realize his 
failure is his own fault because of not studying. 
If the teacher has a proper kee^wledge of the work 



50 MECHANICAL SCIENCE 

and methods of teaching, the ''can't's" will rapidly 
vanish, for as the scientific treatment of the work 
reduces the matter of skill to almost a negligible 
quantity, success becomes almost solely a matter 
of study and mental activity, and, therefore, every 
pupil having normal mental power is with reason- 
able application able to succeed. This is not saying 
that all pupils will attain the same grade of work, 
but rather that all will attain a successful minimum. 
Further, this minimum need never be below a tho- 
roughly well finished problem, and cannot be if the 
instructor use such methods as compel the learning 
of the principles and their definite application to 
each problem. 

Demonstrations 

The method of presenting the instruction is a 
matter of chief importance. In the teaching of 
scientific manual training there should never be 
given a demonstration for a whole class. The need 
for class demonstrations can come only from a wrong 
attitude towards the work on the part of both the 
teacher and pupils. After the pupil has studied 
the textbook and has done all in his power to learn 
and apply it, he may fail to grasp some point. It 
is then the duty of the teacher to find out exactly 
what is lacking and by some means help the pupil 
out. This may often be done by questioning on 



IN EDUCAITON 51 

the text. Sometimes additional directions may be 
given orally. Sometimes the teacher may answer 
the definite question of the pupil by the use of a 
tool. It is not necessary for me to argue that this 
answering of a definite question is essentially dif- 
ferent from a demonstration lesson, altho a part of 
the very same operation may be performed. In one 
case the pupil is looking for something to imitate, 
in the other he is thinking and looking for an idea 
to complete his thought. 

The class demonstration continually weakens 
the pupil by increasing his dependence on another. 
The texbook and explination method increases con- 
tinually the pupil's strength by making him capa- 
ble of doing without sluy personal assistance. In 
fact, as has been proven by experience, he soon 
learns to reason out step by step from what he 
knows difficult problems that are not answered 
even in the text. This continued through a fair 
school course gives the pupil power, on leaving 
school, to enter any of a large number of industries 
and with little or no assistance or ^'showing" reason 
out the needed new processes from the principles he 
has as his stock in trade. If he finds his stock too 
limited or incomplete in some detail, he has learned 
to go to books for help and will likely have no 
difficulty in finding a book that will give the de- 
sired assistance. 



52 MECHANICAL SCIENCE 

The Nature of the Text 

If so much is to be gained from the study of 
mechanical science by the use of a text, it is 
evident that the character of the text is of great 
importance. As the chief value of the text is not 
to give information but to lead to generalizations 
and a knowledge of principles, it is essential that 
the text be such a carefully and systematically 
planned course as will give this result. For this 
reason the basing of the work on reference books, 
or the use of motliods or projects that require a 
large use of random references, is certain to cause 
a failure to get the intellectual out of the work. 

If the pupil is allowed to plan his work and 
carry it forward by use of reference works or by 
the assistance of the instructor he must necessarily 
base his course on the project, and this in turn ne- 
cessitates the steps in the project determining the 
order of study, and the getting of something done 
the ultimate aim. There is, therefore, no power to 
cause the pupil to study a single principle underly- 
ing the work he is doing, x^ll he requires and all 
he will get is a process or so much of a process as 
he needs on his project. This bit of detail or in- 
formation is not necessarily connected with anything 
that precedes or follows, and therefore, having no 
logical connection with anything is soon forgotten. 
The result is that definite progress is not assured 



IN EDUCATION 53 

and the completion of such a course no evidence of 
ability to handle new problems. It is not certain 
that the pupil can repeat the very problems worked 
out in his school course, for each detail having been 
learned for immediate use and not connected by any 
underlying principles with other details is often for- 
gotten as soon as used, so that at the end of the 
course the only things noticeable that the pupil 
carries away from the school are a poorly executed 
problem and a large over-estimate of his knowledge 
of mechanical work. The writer has often seen 
this demonstrated by pupils who have applied to 
him for advanced credit after completing a part or 
all of the work at well known institutions. It may 
be found that this method of class demonstration 
and the attempt to complete a course in school shop 
work by basing the instruction on the project in- 
stead of following definitely planned courses by 
the use of regular texts is the chief reason why so 
many pupils from the manual training schools fail 
to make good in industry. This naturally leads to 
the demand for other types of schools for the teach- 
ing of industrial v/ork. If the root of the diflicul- 
ty is in the methods of instruction employed in the 
common schools, would it not be wise first to im- 
prove these met^iods before going to the large ex- 
pense of estabhshing separate schools? Investigation 
by those in authority ought to bring about such a 
comparative study as to determine the best methods. 



54 MECHANICAL SCIENCE 

Failures in Old-Line Methods 

The writer has found much evidence of the 
failure of the old-line nif^thods, not only in his work 
with pupils in the grades and in high school, but 
also with those who have been prepared b^^ well 
known institutions as teachers of manual training. 
These people, graduates of what are supposed to be 
our best schools, were found to be unable to perform 
in a proper manner many of the elementary tool 
operations. On taking up scientific manual train- 
ing they have confessed that their former course has 
somehow failed to provide them with the informa- 
tion, but that until actually studying the scientific 
principles of working materials they did not realize 
that their course was so defective. The comparison 
made by some of these pupils, those ranking high 
in their credits in old-line work, would be consider- 
ed gross exaggeration by those not familiar with the 
two systems of work. 

Lack of an Established Standard 

There can be no question but that the most 
serious difficulty at present in the building up of a 
course in school shopwork and the establishing of 
proper methods of shop instruction is the lack of 
proper and well understood standards with which 
to compare results. The work is established in a 



IN EDUCATION 55 

school or possibly in an entire school system and 
the work done is thought to be ideal. Teachers 
and pupils are delighted. Large and showy proj- 
ects are made and pupils, teachers and parents be- 
lieve that wonders have been accomplished. Even- 
tually some of the pupils find employment in 
shops or factories and the school shopwork is cred- 
ited with the success. No careful analysis is made 
to determine what part of the work is responsible 
for the results. Seldom if ever are the methods of 
school shopwork and the methods of instruction 
definitely criticised, and last but not least, the fact 
that boys have entered shops and factories in large 
numbers and have met with success without Siuy 
school shopwork is overlooked. The determining 
of a standard for comparison will aid greatl}^ in 
answering the question: Are the methods in use 
in the school shops actually producing results with 
the pupils that especially need this work? There is 
another question that has not yet been satisfactor- 
ily answered in many sections: Are the results of a 
permanent character, or only those contingent on 
the work being new and appealing to a superficial 
interest by its novelty? 

Spoiling Work 

. Another method peculiar to scientific manual 
training is the conducting of the class work so that 



56 MECHANICAL SCIENCE 

a piece is seldom spoiled. Only in a very excep- 
tional case is any pupil given a duplicate piece of 
matei^ial. This tends to a careful planning of work, 
care and system in the work, and the largest possible 
thought factor in evei^y detail. It is the logical 
Sequence of teaching principles which proceed from 
the known io the unkriowh by such steps as the 
pupil is able to take with certainty, and therefore 
there is little opportunity for spoiled projects or 
spoiled pieces of even small size. This avoiding of 
spoiled work is not to be accomplished by having 
the pupil lay aside his regular work from time to 
time and practice the various operations on extra 
material. With the study of principles rather than 
processes there is really nothing to practice, for if 
the principle is well understood the result is correct 
the first tinle; if it is not understood, the proper 
course to pursue is to get an understanding of it 
before attempting to apply it in the working of the 
material. 

Although this avoids waste of material and re- 
duces to a considerable degree the expense of car- 
rying on the shopwork, yet its chief value is in 
the constant increase in the power and confidence 
of the pupil that naturally follows the doing of tasks 
each more and more diflicult and yet without any 
failures. 

, For pupils to demonstrate to themselves by the 
ijise of properly graded shop work that they can by 



IN EDUCATION 57 

proper study and effort do new and difficult tasks 
with a certainty that they will succeed is one of the 
largest possible benefits that can come from any 
sort of school or educational work. Is it not 
therefore reasonable to place a very high value 
on methods that will yield this return and on a 
system of work that readily affords an opportunity 
for such methods? 



Our Duty Toward the 
Manual Training Movement 



This series of articles would be incomplete were 
they to close without pointing out some ways in 
which this movement may be aided by those inter- 
ested in the welfare of our educational system and 
the children. It is not an easy task to point out 
what is needed to be done without noticing some 
of the deficiencies of the work as at present given 
in our leading schools. As we have worked and 
observed the work of others almost since the first 
manual training schools were established, we have 
been unwillingly forced to the conclusion that the 
greatest harm done to the cause is the withholding 
of just criticisms for fear that some one would be 
led to believe that the whole manual training idea 
is wrong. To such an extent has this feeling pre- 
vailed that even those striving diligently for the right 
have been forced to yield to improper methods of 
work because of the popularity of superficial and 
showy attempts by others to get results that would 
appeal to those having no knowledge or understand- 
ing of the larger values of manual training work. 



60 MECHANICAL SCIENCE 

In our criticisms and attempts to point out ways 
and means of aiding this movement, it must not be 
understood that we believe no good has yet come 
from the various attempts at school shopwork. 
^'The past has taught its lesson, the present has its 
duty, the future its hope," and without taking 
space to review what has been done, let us consider 
our duty at the present, not as passive recipients 
of the good the work is doing, but as factors in 
advancing this branch of school work. This sub- 
ject, though well enough established to leave little 
doubt of its continuance as a part of school work, is 
yet new and immature when compared with the pos- 
sibilities before it and, therefore, has a claim on all 
for whatever aid is in their power to give. 

Our Chief DifRclty 

Perhaps our chief difficulty lies in placing too 
much emphasis on what has been accompHshed , for 
as we review the long list of benefits already received 
we feel that our duty to the movement has been 
discharged and that now all we have to do is to 
continue along present lines, or, in other words we 
fail to realize that we are dealing with a new and 
most powerful factor that is to develop into one of 
the most important factors in a system povinding 
a liberal education. 



IN EDUCATION 61 

Because of our experince with other subjects 
of the school course we make use of a false standard 
and fail to realise how much more can be accom- 
plished by this new subject. We rest content, feel- 
ing that its limit has been reached when in reality 
the results obtained are insignificant compared with 
what should be accomplished. No doubt this lack 
of a proper standard for comparison is the cause of 
much of the slackness in the administration of this 
part of our school work. 

Should we criticise the work in any other sub- 
ject of the school course we would judge it as to 
whether it taught the thing intended or not and we 
would permit no indefinite guessing as to what was 
to be taught. If we were to pass judgment on the 
value of a composition on Am^erican history, we 
would not ignore the errors in historical facts and 
call the paper excellent because the writer had made 
a fine appearing paper by aid of a writing machine, 
nor would we condemn a historical paper of a high 
order because the writing was only ordinary. 

Yet we see shop work judged excellent because 
the pupil, or teacher, selected an artistic design, 
although the construction is of an extremely poor 
quality and lacking in all the more valuable features 
of manual training work. We also see other work 
condemned because the design is not the most re- 
plete with curves and surface decoration, although 
it shows not only excellent workmanship, but also 



62 MECHANICAT SCIENCE 

demonslrates large growth in both mechanical effi- 
ciency and intellectual power. To such an extent is 
the work based on design and superficial appear- 
ance in one of the most noted manual training schools 
of this country that the advance in knowledge of 
working materials is all but a negligible quantity 
throughout the course, except with such few pupils 
as have a sufficiently large natural ability to dig out 
these principles in addition to any requirements 
of the schools. In fact, the only pupils that appear 
to be advanced to any noticeable degree in the line 
of mechanical work, or to receive any intellectual 
growth from the use of tools, are those who would 
"dig out a trade" without a teacher if given tools 
and a place for work. Are we doing our duty by 
the pupils and the taxpayers when we establish 
expensive manual training schools and allow 
such methods of work as permit the shops 
and mechanical courses to be only passive elements 
in the school work. 

Not Finding Fault 

This is not finding fault with good derfign or 
art, but as no one has yet given any reason 
whaterve why we cannot have these things to- 
gether with the learning of the things for which 
manual training was established, it seems that 
some one has a serious diitv to perfonm when 



IN EDUCATION 6B 

we see schools in which various other lines of 
work have largely or entirely displaced the 
manual training work, although making use of 
the forms and tools properly belonging to the 
manual training. One does not need to visit 
many leading manual training schools to find, 
if he will take the trouble to see exactl}^ wliat is 
being done, pupils who have passed through the 
woodshops with no apparent growth in abihty 
to work solid materials nor with any of the intellect- 
ual growth that should result from a thorough and 
definite study of mechanical science. 

Teacher's Qualifications 

Closely allied with our duty in criticising the 
work is that of careful scrutiny of the teacher's qual- 
ifications. As an example, Mr. G — secured a po- 
sition in one of our largest cities as instructor in 
shopwork in a ward school. He was recommended 
by a school known to substantially all educators as 
a school especially qualified to fit pupils for teach- 
ing manual training. The actual preparation that 
this teacher received was some of the school's the- 
ories and shop practice, consisting of the making of 
a ''plant label" and partly making a ''plant stick." 
On being asked how he managed to get along 
on such a limited knowledge of tool work, 
he replied that for the first three months he 



64 MECHANICAL oCIENCE 

watched the pupils to see how they did the work. 
At the time the writer visited this school the work 
was still crude attempts at making articles, mostly 
of doubtful value, with very Uttle learned. 

The writer's observations confirm the statement 
of many practical men that there is altogether too 
large a percentage of people in the school wood- 
shops who have nothing to teach in the line of wood- 
work and are therefore bluffing and trying to make 
a showing by pointing to the '^design," the '^art." 
the ^' self -activity of the pupil" and va^rious other 
outside matters to cover up their total deficieiicy 
in knowledge of working materials. 

Another Example 

Again, in a city especially favored with an enthu- 
siastic superintendent and abundant means, vari- 
ous systems of manual training were supposed to 
be tried out and conclusions reached. The writer, 
anxious to get the best to be had, took occasion 
to attend as a regular pupil the classes of one of 
the instructors. You can imagine the writer's 
feelings on discovering that this teacher, supposed 
to be at or near the top in his line, had never 
thought of any principles of tool work and was 
grossly ignorant of many simple tool operations. 
In fact, he had literally notlung to teach. Xt 
best he had only a few muscular movements to 



IN EDUCATION 65 

go through before the class for the pupils to 
blindly imitate. It is no wonder that this city, 
after a variety of such experimenting, should now 
be trying a trade school. It is the duty of some 
one to change this condition. 

Why Trade Schools? 

Should we dig to the bottom of the present 
agitation for a dual system of schools there seems 
little doubt but that we will find the cause of 
the difficulty in the emplo} ment of incompetent 
instructors in the shops of the regular schools. 

Scattered throughout the country are a few 
teachers who actually know what they are trying 
to teach and actually teach it; but mixed up 
with these in all sorts of official relations are 
those who have substantially no knowledge of the 
fundamental principles of working solid materials 
and are therefore putting up all sorts of bluffs 
and makeshifts to take the place of actual in- 
struction in mechanical lines. That some one has 
failed to do his duty is plainly evident. Our 
present duty is to take nothing for granted and 
go carefully into the details of our school shop- 
work so that no one may be misjudged. Those do- 
ing good work should be encouraged and helped 
to do more and better, while those blufFmg at 
the job should be eliminated. 



66 MECHANICAL SCIENCE 

Duty of Siiperinter dent 

There are many ways in- vvl.icb the superin- 
tendent of schools can help the niai-ual training 
movement. As most of these olTieiais have had 
no opportunity to study this line of work either 
by actually doing it or teaching it, there is ex- 
ceptional need for school principals that have a 
thorough knowledge both of the theory and prac- 
tice of shop instruction. Therefore the superin- 
tendent has an opportunity to aid much by en- 
couraging the school principals to spend the nec- 
essary time to get a thorough knowledge of the 
work. Also in employing principals he can give 
the preference to candidates satisfactory in other 
respects and up in manual training work. He 
will be able to aid very much by encouraging 
all his teachers to get as large an understand- 
ing of the shop work as their time will permit. 
His chief aid, however, is in helping to form a 
healthy public sentiment. 

Basement Shops 

We may help to get the shops out of the dark 
cellars and basements. It is impossible to teach the 
principles of shop work in a satisfactory manner 
unless there is an abundance of well difi'iisod Ii?;-ht. 
It is not enough that a pupil nia^^ be ahle to see 



IN EDUCATION 67 

the lines on his work by holding it up to the light. In 
order to learn the correct methods of doing the work, 
the pupil must be able to see all the lines definitely 
with the work in proper position on the bench. This 
is impossible with the ordinary basement light, and 
especially so where it enters from but one side. 
While a pupil may turn a book about until the 
light is effective, the shop work often cannot be 
thus turned. Everyone having to do with the 
manual training work should aid in creating a 
sentiment that will make the use of an improp- 
erly lighted basement for shop work entirely out 
of the question. If room is insufficient and a base- 
ment must be used, then use it for some class 
that does not require so much light. Other recita- 
tions usually require half the time and therefore it 
is a matter of good hygiene to use the rooms for 
such recitations as will change the pupils a}x)ut 
often, keeping one class in the unpleasant sur- 
roundings for as short a time as possible. With 
properly conducted courses, the noise and litter of 
the wood -shop need not hinder its being located in 
any schoolroom. We are rapidly passing from that 
stage in the development of shop work when its 
success is to be measured by the amount of noise 
made and the piles of shavings and materials, 
possibly spoiled pieces, littered about the room. 
We have almost reached a point when we can say 
that the actual value of the work is inverse! v as 



68 MECHANICAL SCIENCE 

the amount of noise and also the quantity of ma- 
terials used. It is therefore true that the school 
shop has no greater claim on .us all than to have 
this fact recognized ; and then be placed in a re- 
spectable part of the school buildings. 

Is the Pupil Thinking? 

Another duty that can be successfully performed 
only by those familiar with the educational pro- 
cesses and able to judge accurately of the intel- 
lectual activities of the pupils, as well as having 
an exact knowledge of the shop problems, is the 
careful analysis of the work to determine whether 
it is resulting in actual thinking or only in simple 
perceptions. Is the pupil merely receiving, bit by 
bit, such fragments of information as he requires in 
the making of his project or is he forming general- 
izations and learning fundamental principles that 
he understands and will be able to apply to other 
and various problems? No more important task 
is before those able to carry on this line of criticism, 
and no other line of criticism will do so much to 
estabhsh the valuable and eliminate the worthless. 
V To place correct values on each detail of the 
work, although a matter of no small labor, is also a 
matter of no small importance. It is neither just 
to the shopwork nor to the pupils to permit extra- 
ne-')us mattrr to be traded for the real values of 



IN EDUCATION 69 

tool work, nor can we hope to make definite 
progress so long as this substituting is permitted. 
Only by this careful analysis of the work and by 
placing true values on each part can we hope to 
strengthen the weak places and eliminate that 
which is not primarily manual training. To-day 
we are religiously holding to certain methods of 
work because in the past they have been compared 
with others even more defective, and found better. 
Such a method of elimination can lead only to 
confusion. We should rather, however great the 
task, see that we are comparing correct values, 
or at least not settle down to a fixed conviction 
until such a comparison can be made. Should we 
undertake such a review of our conclusion we may 
find that all the confusion that has been so charac- 
teristic of the manual training movement has been 
caused by drawing conclusions from imperfect data. 
Judgments are formed and the possibje values 
of school shopwork determined by inspecting work 
that is entirely void of any of those values found 
in Mechanical Science w6rk. Conclusions are 
formed without any knowledge of the science as 
exemphfied in that high type of workmanship 
now found in leading American industries. Er- 
roneous judgments are made because of seeing 
some finished project that is apparently satis: actorj^ 



70 MECHANICAL SCIENCE 

without inquiring as to methods of accomplish- 
ment or as to how much superior results might 
have been accomphshed by using such subject 
matter as properly forms the content of a school 
shop course. 



German Schools and 
Our Problem 



Always in search of the best, never satisfied 
with the present, the patriotic American does not 
hesitate to go anywhere for information or sug- 
gestions that promise assistance in making or 
keeping this nation in the lead. It was necessary 
for some one only to hint that another nation was 
hkely to surpass us in certain lines of school work 
to start a series of pilgrimages to that foreign land 
in quest of those better things in education. As 
we look upon the accumulation of reports, some 
pubUc, some private, that have resulted from these 
pilgrimages we can scarcely help beHeving that 
something awful is in store for our beloved land 
if we do not at once move some of those German 
schools bodily over the sea and fill them v/ith 
American boys. 

Just how all this began is difficult to determine. 
Perhaps now it does not matter. Certainly, if we 
can pause long enough to get our bearings and 
determine our present duty, we shall have accom- 
plished much. To accomplish this, let us refuse 



72 MECHANICAL SCIENCE 

to theorize, and devote our attention to some facts 
from a different source than those usually sup- 
plied in the discussion of this great problem in 
education. 

A Question of Mechanical Efficiency 

As this is, in the end, a question of commer- 
cial or mechanical efficiency we may reasonably 
expect to find some very definite data to guide 
us in our conclusions. We may not treat a mat- 
ter, so definitely in the realm of the exact, with 
hearsay testimony or the generalizations of the 
mind that has been schooled largely by reading 
fiction. Neither can we grant the claim of immu- 
nity from criticism because of professional courtesy . 
The world of business, though possessing many of 
the liighex" ideals of human relations is, neverthe- 
less, run on what is, rather than what might be, 
and when we wish to develop a school to increase 
the efficiency in the industrial world of the rising 
generation we must be very careful to deal with 
what is, rather than what seems to be, because of 
careless or incompetent conclusions. 
^ It is not necessary to take space to repeat th-^ 
many variously-worded statements so often met 
y/ith, all of which may be summed up in the one 
sentence: that Germany is getting the markets 
of the world awav from us and this is the result 



IN EDUCATION 73 

of Germany's schools that train a superior body of 
workers for her industries. This statement readily 
divides into two parts: the getting of the world's 
trade, and the means by which it is accomplished, 
or superior German schools. 

Casual Statements Have Passed as Authority 

As I have read report after report and article 
after article by those usually credited with care in 
their statements I have been quite amazed at the 
reckless manner in which casual statements or mere 
guesses have been passed along until the}^ have been 
clothed with all the authoritj^ of carefully estab- 
lished facts. Where did the notion come from 
that Germany is getting the markets of the world 
away from us? Who first said so, and on what 
authority? A glance at ''Uncle Sam's Almanac," 
the Annual Report of Commerce and Navigation, 
does not tell any such thing, nor even hint at any 
such conclusion. Why, our exports of manufactures 
are growing so rapidly that unless something unusual 
is to happen we shall soon not only be the lead- 
ing nation of the world in the export of manufac- 
tures, but literally dominate the world's markets. 
Look for a moment at these figures: In 1820 we 
exported $2,925,105 worth of manufactures ready 
for consumption. The figures for subsequent years 
are: 1850, $17,162,206 worth: 1870, $56,329,137 



74 MECilANICAL SClHiNCE 

worth: 1890, $132,257,050 worth: In the year 
1900, 1331,995,684 worth: in 1908, $489,469,958 
worth: m 1910, $499,215,329 worth: and in 1913, 
$776,297,360. Add to this about one-half as 
much more of articles on which we have done 
as much of the work as we find profitable and 
we have an even stronger showing. 

Another Item of Exports 

There is another item to be added to our total 
exports of manufactured articles that usually is 
entirely overlooked. We are apt to think of all 
farm products as the very beginnings of raw materi- 
als. This was no doubt true when the grain grew 
almost unaided by cultivation and the dairy and 
meat products were taken from the roving herd. 
But today the wheat and corn, the butter and 
beef, is largely the last product of a co-operation 
in production which begins in the iron mine and 
the coal mine as well as in the field. Could we 
but see the millions of wheels that turn as a part 
of one gigantic machine to grind out the corn 
and wheat from the soil, we would not wonder that 
we do not have to go to the ends of the earth 
to gain a competence by selling manufactures. 

From your own knowledge and experience of 
affairs calculate the amount of iron and steel and 
wood in the shape of agricultural machinery and 



IN EDUCATION 75 

the machinery with which the agricultural ma- 
chinery is made, to produce an average farm crop. 
To think that the load of wheat represents a 
gift from the soil, or even a large percentage of 
it, is to overlook our modern methods of production. 

Therefore, when we ship our cargoes of wheat 
and meat, we are shipping the produce of the 
thousands of factories and shops, from the black- 
smith shop where the farmer has his horseshoeing 
done, to the great farm implement factories and 
railroad shops that supply him with engines, ma- 
chinery and means of transportation. 

As American farmers use much more machinery 
in their work than those of any other country a 
larger percentage of our agricultural exports should 
be credited to our manufacturers than to any oth- 
er country. Just how large a percentage of the 
total of about $450,000,000 should thus be cred- 
ited cannot be determined. Toknow that a great 
amount of capital and a large number of em- 
ployees are interested in the manufacture of agri- 
cultural m.achinery is but a partial estimate, for 
even a larger number of men and a greater amount 
of capital is used in supplying machinery and 
materials for these agricultural machinery plants. 
In our study of modern education we are alto- 
gether too apt to think in terms and meanings 
that apply only to conditions prevailing before 
the advent of modern industrial methods. 



76 MECHANICAL SCIENCE 



Is Germany Flooding This Country? 

But someone says, Germany is flooding this 
country with her manufactures. Perhaps, and 
perhaps not. Nearly everyone finds it really 
profitable to purchase something of his neighbor 
and it does not seem out of place for us to buy 
of Germany. Better not set down the deal as 
unfavorable until going carefully over the bargain 
and making certain just how it is made and who 
is getting the larger benefit. What do you see 
about you that bears the ''Made in Germany" 
mark? Scissors, pocket knives, fancy articles, 
cheap jewelry, picture postcards, dolls, etc. and 
occasionally some larger and more pretentious 
article; but the Ust as you would make it from 
your own observation would not differ greatly 
from the list found in the government reports. 

Most of the articles are imported in such small 
quantities as not to be worthy of consideration. 
Compared with our totals in industrial life they 
may well be likened to neighborly housewives 
occasionally exchanging a pie or cake or helping 
one another with a tin of biscuit. 

One of our large items is books, maps and 
printed matter, about one and a half million 
dollars' worth a year. Were this all in picture 
postcards it would be about three per capita. 



IN EDUCATION 77 

This ought not to worry us. About one-half as 
much in value of bronzes, one-fourth of a cent per 
capita of buttons and about one-half a cent per 
capita of clocks and watches. In china, porcelain, 
Parian and bisque ware we import less than four 
cents' worth per capita. In '^Iron and Steel and 
Manufactures of", the total amounts to something 
less than six cents per capita, including less than 
two cents per capita of cutlery. 

This is a Large Country 

We must keep in mind that this is a large 
country and that we have many foreigners among 
us who still retain their prejudices for things made 
in the fatherland ; also that many of our merchants 
import articles not because they are better, but 
to cater to the never-ceasing call for variety or 
something that bears the mark of having been 
brought from a great distance. 

The Competitive Imports Are Few 

Eliminate from our imports from Germany such 
items as these, and those in which she has a special 
advantage because of raw material, and the total 
dwindles to insignificance. Take away also those 
of a nature we do not care to make and the re- 
in linder diminishes almost to the vanishing point. 



78 MECHANICAL SCIENCE 

What Germany is actually selling us in many 
lines is well illustrated by a statement made by 
the head of the purchasing department of one 
of our very largest firms selUng tools and machin- 
ery for a great variety of purposes. Their trade 
extends to every country on the globe using or 
making tools of commercial value. He says of 
Germany that there is only one mechanics' tool 
that his firm gets from that whole empire, and 
that is the little German bit of a cheap quality/ 
that manufacturers in other countries do not 
care to make, as they can find something better 
to do with their plants. 

What Does Germany Buy of Us? 

Supposing you were in Germany, what would you 
find bearing the earmarks of Uncle Sam's workmen? 
Typewriters, shoe machinery, fine tools, precision 
lathes, machine tools and, in fact, the best of a large 
line of manufactures requiring a high grade of me- 
chanical knowledge and selling at a high price per 
article. Many of our machines found in German 
establishments sell at from two thousand to si>c 
thousand dollars each, while scarcely any machine 
tool of American make sells in that country for 
less than two hundred dollars How many dolls 
can we import in exchange for one of those ma- 
chines? How many pocket knives can we get for 



IN EDUCATION 79 

a typewriter or adding machine? How many 
^'Made-in-Germany" razors can we get for one 
safety razor? It is reported that our safety ra- 
zor manufacturers are making great headway in 
the German market. We sell them enuf agricul- 
tural implements to pay for the cutlery ; about an 
even exchange of automobiles, clocks and watches; 
dental goods enuf to pay for the philosophical ap- 
paratus we get of them. I need not suggest that 
we get the better end of that bargain. 

Add to the above a million dollars' worth of 
builders' hardware, saws, tools, etc.; as much more 
for cash registers and similar machines, and 3^et 
another million for machine tools. Sewing ma- 
chines and shse machinery amount to another mil- 
lion, while typewriters passed the million dollar 
mark in 1907. With all these items we have yet 
another million dollars' worth of exports in mis- 
cellaneous machinery not itemized. All told we 
sell to Germany $274,178,712 worth, and import 
from Germany $142,935,547 worth. (Totals for 
1908.) Not a bad showing considering the size 
of our nation and its many varied wants. The 
question for the American people is: Are these 
good bargains? These dealings indicate that we 
make such exchanges as we find profitable and that 
because of the superior training or education of the 
American workman we are able to deal on a basis 
very advantageous to the American manufacturer. 



MECHANICAL SCIENCE 



This is Not of the Past 

Lest someone may think that ail this shipping 
of our manufactured products to Germany is a 
matter of the past, we quote from the Department 
of Commarce and Labor, Special report on Ger- 
man Iron and Steel Industry, 1909 (page 56) : 

''When the United States began to supply itself 
with wire nails of its own manufacture, that was 
a distinct loss of trade to Germany, but the loss 
became much m^ore acute when the United States 
invaded the Orinet and captured a valuable mar- 
ket for wire products. This market it has since 
held, and Germany has sought compensation by 
trying to increase her exports of other iron and 
steel products to the United States. During the 
last year American competition has interfered se- 
riously with Germany's shipments of steel sheets 
to England. 

United States Increasing Its Exports 

''The United States on its part has been in- 
creasing most of its exports of finished products 
to Germany. In spite of the protective tariff 
and of the efforts of the German manufacturers 
to provide agricultural implements, the impor- 
tations from the United States continue abov^e 



IN EDUCATION 81 

$1,000,000 annually, tho some of them undoubt- 
edly are for reshipment to other continental coun- 
tries. In metal- working machinery, notwithstand- 
ing all the efforts of the German manufacturers to 
provide machine tools of their own construction, 
and notwithstanding their own exports, the Amer- 
ican makers hold their ground. This is partly due, 
it is claimed, to the inability of the German man- 
ufacturers to develop an inventive spirit, their 
chief reliance still being on copying American de- 
signs. Builders' hardware, saws, and hand tools 
also form a prominent list of importations/' 

From another Daily Consular and Trade Report 
we quote: ''The excellence of many classes of 
American goods finds foreign markets, even tho 
their cost is materially greater than that ot similar 
competing lines, which should encourage American 
manufacturers and exporters generally to maintain 
at all hazards the present average high standard 
of American goods.'' 

We Compete With Germany iii Other Countries 

Did space permit, it could be shown that we 
are competing with Germany in many other coun- 
tries in a similar manner ; that we are selling large 
quantities of such articles as require a high degree of 
intelligence on the part of the workman and leaving 
those of the cruder sort to be supplied by others. 



82 MECHANICAL SCIENCE 

But let us go one step farther and determine 
as nearly as we can just what the conditions are. 
The important question is : Are the German work- 
men better trained for their work? Perhaps these 
examples from trade are not representative of their 
actual ability or training. What we want to know 
is whether there is in all that country a class of 
workmen in mechanical or trade lines superior to 
the United States. That this question may be 
answered with certainty seems reasonable, for it 
should be possible to gather very reliable data for 
such a comparison. 

The Highest Type of Workmanship 

Those familiar with the trades and high 
grade v/orkmanship along mechanical lines will 
invariably agree with the statement that the high- 
est type of workmanship or mechanical ability is 
found in those lines known as machine tool con- 
struction. If any nation is superior to another 
in industrial intelligence it will be shown in these 
lines. Therefore by a careful study of this one 
branch of manufacturing we may know with cer- 
tainty which nation, if either, is superior industri- 
ally. These tools are capable of receiving the most 
exacting test ; they are always thus tested and the 
testing will be known by a class of people thoro- 
ly capable of passing correct judgment. An auto- 



IN EDUCATION 83 

mobile may be praised by one and condemned 
by another because, possibly, neither party is ca- 
pable of forming a judgment upon the actual mer- 
its of the machine. An expensive machine tool 
is usually purchased on the recommendation of an 
expert on that tool. After being purchased, the 
tool is sure to be thoroly tried out by many days 
of carefully checked work. 

It is therefore pretty certain that a thoro study 
of the machine tool trade will leave little doubt 
as to which nation is really leading in mechani- 
cal enterprises. Such a study becomes all the more 
conclusive when, as in the present case, there are 
no definitely determined data from any source con- 
tradicting the conclusions to which the machine 
tool trade forces us. The fact that one of Ger- 
many's prominent manufacturers, after a casual 
trip thru our country in 1904 wrote that Germany 
had nothing to fear from the United States, is not 
sufficient to settle the question. These casual ob- 
servers are often good at making interesting reports, 
but that nation that shapes its policies on such 
reports will some day awake to find itself niaking 
dolls and cheap cutlery instead of the highest grade 
of machinery and tools. 

The report of our Captain Godfrey L. Garden, 
special agent of the Department of Commerce 
and Labor, is definite and reliable as to which 
nation, Germany or the United States, is really 



84 MECHANICAL SCIENCE 

ieadiPxg in mechanical enterprises. Our people 
should be proud of the fact that we can send 
abroad a man so generous and yet so painstaking 

and exact in his investigations a gentleman 

not only willing to give all countries and all 
manufacturers their just dues, but also able to 
recognize products of other lands made after Amer- 
ican designs. 

The findings of this officer, which show every 
mark of the m.ost careful, conscientious and 
thoroly competent investigator, are interesting 
indeed and ouglit to be printed in large type for 
the benefit of some of our countrymen. 

Not only do his reports bear the marks of the 
most exact investigations, but they are being 
continually substantiated and emphasized by re- 
ports thru the daily and other official reports of 
our consular service. I feel that we may there- 
fore take his statements as thoroly reliable, and 
base our conclusions upon them. The entire re- 
ports are interesting and valuable. For our pur- 
pose I will make use of but a few typical passages. 

United States Has Led the World 

Trom the introduction we quote,* 'Tn the man- 
ufacture of high grade machine tools the United 

* Machine Tool Trade in Germany, France, Switzerland, Italy 
and United Kingdom. 



IN EDUCATION 85 

States in the past decade and a half has easil}^ led 
the world. During much of this period the enor- 
mous demands of the home market have taxed to 
the utmost the output capacity of many American 
manufacturing plants, and the foreign orders in 
these circumstances have necessarily suffered. De- 
spite, however, the insistence of the domestic field 
the exports of machine tools from the United States 
has each year steadily increased, but this increase 
has been due, not so much to the efforts of Ameri- 
can manufacturers in the foreign market as to the 
recognition abroad of the inherent merits of the 
best grade of American-built tools. 

"Broadly speaking, the best grades of American 
machine tools excel both in design and workman^- 
ship, and in the accuracy of working results, the 
foreign-built tools." 

These are rather strong statements. Let us 
now consider some of the facts upon which these 
conclusions are based. One of the first plants 
visited was a machine tool works in Berlin. Cap- 
tain Garden, in concluding his report on this visit, 
says, "While the Loewe managers naturally rate 
their own products high, it is most interesting to 
note that they concede the most advanced form 
of chucking machines, radial drills, upright drills, 
circular and universal grinding machines, planers 
and the bevel-gear shaping machines are to be found 
in America." 



86 MECHANICAL SCIENCE 

Another machine shop visited is apparently 
considered one of the very best in Germany. This 
firm is reported as doing conspicuously good work 
on milling machines. The most interesting part 
of the report is that the firm controls and man- 
ufactures these machines under American patents. 
There is also a long list of machine tools of Amer- 
ican make found in these works. 

Another firm, evidently opposed, on patriotic 
principles, to using any foreign-made tools, is 
making a specialty of a ma,chine, no doubt largely 
copied from a leading American design, and 
is also using American-made grinding machines. 
Yet another plant, using a few American machine 
tools, is especially favorable to our measuring tools. 

Germans Trained in the United States 

On the outskirts of Berlin is a plant that is 
exceptional both in equipment and management. 
Mr. Garden says, 'Tt would be refreshing for some 
of our American manufacturers who believe that 
we alone understand the term 'shop efficiency,' to 
take a walk thru these shops, and I beheve that a 
glimpse of the workings of this particular plant 
would cause a realization of what there is ahead 
of America in foreign competition. To make this 
clearer, it should be known that the methods in 
vogue at Borsig's are practically those followed in 



IN EDUCATION 87 

similaj' large works in the United States. Herr 
Neuhaus, who has charge of the shop work at 
Borsig's, spent three years, I understand, at the 
AlHs-Chalmers plant in Milwaukee, and I leani 
that this same gentleman while there had much 
to do with the designing of the big Allis-Chalmers 
engine which is now in operation at the Ludwig- 
Loew works in Berlin." 

After giving a list of American firms represented 
in the machine tool equipment, follows the state- 
ment, "Only American pneumatic tools are used.' 
This is probably due to the fact that this firm has 
an exceptionally accurate method of testing the 
efficiency of such tools, these tests showing con- 
clusively the inferiority of the German tools. Yet 
another concern, having its quota of American 
machine tools, uses exclusively i^merican ovens in 
its tool hardening department. 

German Uses Only American Tools 

In a summing up of this chapter, Captain Car- 
den states: ''A German manufacturer of machine 
tools, when recently building a new shop, equipped 
it thruout with American machine tools. He did 
not even draw on his own makes. These latter 
statements are facts w^hich are not generally known 
in the trade." And ''The best American machine 
tools, and all new and special tools possessing merit 



88 MECHANICAL SCIENCE 

other than mere ingenuity, will find a market in 
Europe." On page 64 of the report we read: "I 
found in Soligen a firm w^hich in previous years 
has enjoyed a most enviable reputation for its high 
standard of saws, and yet I was informed at this 
establishment that its German business has been 
practically ruined by an American saw made at 
Philadelphia." Are not these facts enuf to convince 
the most skeptical that the American is undoubt- 
edly in the lead and with reasonable care likely to 
coritinuo at the head? 

American Tools in France 

Should we go to France, where there is a more 
even chance with Germany for American tools, we 
will find yet more to encourage us. On the first 
page of the report on ''Machine Tool Trade in 
France," we learn of one firm having ''no less than 
forty-five Brown & Sharp machines." Then fol- 
lows a long list of other American firms represent- 
ed. 

In another French plant was found many A- 
merican tools, but most interesting was the finding 
of a Gray (American) planer and a copy of the 
same make made by a German firm and the satis- 
faction of knowing that the German copy was rec- 
ognized as inferior to the American original. 

But wh}^ multiply these statements that are 



IN EDUCATION 89 

so nearly uniformly in favor of American tools'' 
One large French concern uses 1,743 machine tools, 
of which 1,300 are of American manufacture. The 
remainder, largely for the rougher work, are from 
Germany, France and other countries. 

Competition in England 

In England, Germany does not appear to be 
able to keep American goods out. Some catalogs 
of leading tool firms of England that I have at 
hand show large lines of American tools. I am un- 
able to find any tools of German make listed. Is 
this no index of the industrial rank of the two 
nations? When we pause to consider the fact that 
the world at large is unworked territory for the fine 
tool trade and that the needs of the nations in this 
line are beyond the possibility of our manufacturers 
to supply for m^any years to come, should we not 
hesitate to adopt a system of schools that has not 
yet given one single high grade mechanics' tool to 
the world? 

As we enter the English machine tool plants 
we are met with conditions similar to those found 
in France; American machines taking the lead 
and German machines of German designs or im- 
itations of American designs, taking second place. 
To list the American machine tools in foreign coun- 
tries wculd be to m^ake an almost complete 



90 MECHANICAL SCIENCE 

directory of our first-class shops and their products. 
To know that these tools are in other lands because 
of the superior qualities given them by the American 
^^orkman is a matter of national pride. 

Conditions Similar in Other Countries 

The reports cover several other countries and 
with like results. The conclusion that must fol- 
low is that Germany is a nation of copyists and 
not likely to ever lead in high-grade mechanical 
lines. Belgium, tho too small to become a serious 
competitor, undoubtedly is exhibiting more of the 
spirit of independent advance and far more likely 
to be our rival in grade of workmanship and de- 
sign than any other European nation. Russia has 
a plant that may in time compete with us but 
this is rather a compliment to our country and 
our schools for it is a thoroly American plant, 
except the workmen. The moving spirit is an Amer- 
ican, American trained, and the entire business is 
run on American lines and largely with American 
machinery. 

America Superior in Other Lines 

Although the machine tool trade undoubtedly 
is sufficient to answer our question, yet we will find 
abundant evidence of American superiority in 



IN EDUCATION 91 

many other lines. Although the first printing press 
was invented in a foreign land long before the soli- 
tudes of this continent had been disturbed by in- 
dustrial life, yet long before we could be called a 
manufacturing nation, we gave to the world the 
''Washington Press" that has remained the best of 
its class, and have continued to lead in most of the 
improvements since. An American press manufac- 
turer claims that the sun never sets on his presses 
as they are sold the world over in competition with 
the best productions of England, Germany and 
France. It is no doubt true that this can be said 
of many of our styles of presses. 

Statements showing the superiority of American 
goods might be brought together in numbers to fill 
a volume. America has led and is leading and 
will lead, because of the superior type of intelligence 
of its workmen. Our laws, our society, our inter- 
mingling of peoples all tend to a freedom of thot 
that yields an especially acute and progressive type 
of manhood. No man, and especially no mechanic 
who has felt the impulse of our civilization, feels 
bound to any system or method of activity because 
others did or do follow it. The ver}^ air suggests 
improvement and when our manufacturer has made 
a great iron planer that beats the world, he is as 
restless as ever and yet ^ 'sails on and on" until he 
makes a machine that other nations cannot even 
duplicate after he has made it. Should you visit 



92 MECHANICAL SCIENCE 

the works where the ''Clray Planers" are made you 
would find today no less effort at improvement 
than in the past, and when the German mechanic 
has made a copy that will pass for equal to the 
''Gray" he will still find his neighbors importing 
'Gray Planers" with features of which he has not 
yet learned. 

The Chief Obstacle 

The chief obstacle to our sales a^broad is not the 
inferiority of our products but rather the lack on the 
part of the foreigner to appreciate the superior 
quality of American goods. One of the greatest 
aids to the extension of American trade would be 
the establishing of schools in foreign lands to teach 
the use of and merits of American manufactures. 

¥/e Need Hot Fear 

We need not fear losing our trade because of 
other manufacturers copying our products. There 
are two sides to all questions, even to this one of 
copying American products. It not only proves 
beyond any possible argument that we are the 
intellectual leaders in mechanical lines, but it aiso 
shows that the Old World is awakening and 
taking on somewhat of the American characteris- 
tic of change and inquiry. Could a nation copy 



IN EDUCATION 93 

and stop, returning to its conservatism after copy- 
ing our best machines, then would their markets 
be closed to us indeed. But one may as well at- 
tempt to hold back the torrent after the dam ha> 
broken away as to attempt to stop a people from 
continuing to want the latest and best after once 
thoroly breaking up the old conservative idea 
that what has been is good enuf. To America 
this means that copying of our machines will lead 
only to a greater inquiry for the best and a larger 
use of our products, and always of the later and 
more profitable productions with an ever-widening 
and increasing sale for American products, pro- 
viding we continue to keep the American spirit 
and ideals of progress. 

Therefore, what can we conclude but that the 
German workmen, as a class, are the victims of 
their own schooling rather than the product of 
initiative in independent and progressive study; 
that the imperialistic atmosphere which pervades 
all activities, even the special schools, gives to 
them a form and discipline that makes of the 
German youth a follower and respecter of that 
which has been, rather than a progressive work- 
man full of initiative and ambition to excel. Yf e 
can form no other jndgment than that such influ- 
ence as their schools exert, tends to make the 
nation something less than the best in spirit and 
action in the industrial world. 



94 MECHANICAL SCIENCE 



Preserve the American T3^e 

Let us not frighten ourselves over what others 
are doing, but bend our energies to preserve and 
magnify the American type of workman. To do 
this we must keep American ideals. And of all 
things American, no other is so distinctly our very 
own as the free public common school where every 
boy may start out on a common level to work 
out his own destiny with no shadow from king or 
aristocracy to obscure the pure light of his chosen 
star. Instead of sending over to Germany trades- 
men or men of classical education to study their 
^'trade schools," send the scientific mechanic who 
is capable of judging the actual conditions and 
differences and who can bring back information 
that will aid in advancing our own scientific know- 
ledge of working materials. Such men are ob- 
tainable in almost any large manufacturing plant 
and their investigations w^ould be of the greatest 
value. 

Follow American Practice 

We must not fail to note that not only do 
European shops of the better class draw largely 
upon America for tools, but that they also follow 
American practice in factory management. In 



IN EDUCATION 95 

many cases the active influence is a man of supe- 
rior type who not only has all his native country 
could give, but has also a training, the result of 
years of work and study by actual employment in 
American shops. In Belgium there is a manufac- 
turing plant that appears to have more of the real 
American spirit and ideals than are found in any 
other plant in all Europe. Of this concern Cap- 
tain Garden says, "The Mellotte equipment, com- 
posed as it is, almost exclusively of American 
machine tools, and operated on American lines, 
gives the Remicourt shops practically all the ad- 
vantages of an American plant plus the further 
advantages oiTered by a lower wage scale. Melotte 
carries his American ideas to such an extent that 
nearly all the office furniture is of American or- 
gin. The desks are for the most part of the Mally 
type, and the Warren Manufacturing Company, of 
Chicago, has supplied most of the boxes used for 
filing away small tool parts. An American card- 
index system is in use." 

Germany May Study Our Schools 

The success of this plant is but a type or fore- 
cast of what might be accomplished by German 
concerns should they enter fully into the Ameri- 
can spirit, and come to realize in all its force what 
American methods and machines mean in the com- 



96 MECHANICAL SCIENCE 

mercial manufactory. Perhaps they will not only 
buy our machine tools and send representatives 
o^ er to work in our shops and stud}^ our methods, 
but also do as Belgium has already done, study 
our schools. As I look on a copy of the report of 
the Honorable Omer Buyse on American indust- 
rial education, published by the Belgian govern- 
ment, it seems to me a remarkable coincidence 
that the nation gathering this data and publishing 
such a voluminous report should show such mark- 
ed signs of leading all Europe in the spirit of mod- 
ern manufacturing. Can it be possible that we 
must go to Belgium to discover what it is in 
America that makes us the copied of all the indus- 
trial world? Is it not possible that we are like 
the absent-minded grandsire who searched and 
searched for his spectacles, but without the least 
success, until informed that he was looking thru 
them. Perhaps we will discover that we are search- 
ing for a system of education while possessing one 
that has alread}^ asserted itself as the greatest of 
all and the very pov/er b}^ which or thru which we 
are making the search and seeing such great things 
abroad that are really only the reflection of what 
we have accomplished. 

[Since the above was written there have been 
published various reports confirming these views. 
The recent war has done much to disillusion us 
in regard to the merits of German schools.! 



IN EDUCATION 97 



Imitation a Confession of Weakness 

In contrast to the German manufacturers' aspi- 
rations and what they are doing notice the following 
quotation from an American machine tool circular : 
"We hold to the behef that imitation is an indi- 
cation of weakness and that a firm, seeking success 
in a large sense, must possess originality." The 
result is that this firm, tho but a few years in busi- 
ness, has advancsd rapidly in this country and 
their machines are known and used in many foreign 
lands, and are acknowledged superior to any ma- 
chines for a similar purpose made in Germany or 
any other foreign country. This is indeed a typi- 
cal statement that well illustrates the attitude of 
the American manufacturers and workmen, for not 
a few of the men who today are the leaders in 
manufacturing took the motto of "no imitation" 
as workmen and because of it are in their present 
positions. 

Develop Our Schools Along American Lines 

Perhaps after all we shall find that our problem 
is not to import some educational theories to be 
patched onto our great and original free public 
schools, but rather to cut away some foreign 
patches and strengthen our schools by develop- 



98 MECHANICAL SCIENCE 

ing them along purely American lines with pure 
American ideals as our guide and ambition. That 
there is a cry against the present products of our 
pubhc schools no one will deny. That with the 
schools thru which the present generation of 
workmen came we have surpassed the world is 
quite as evident. Then let us set hard at work 
to know, not guess, at where the weakness lies 
and work out our problem like true Americans, 
reaching out for the larger things by holding to 
the ideals of the manufacturer who says, "We 
hold to the belief that imitation is a confession 
of weakness and that a firm seeking success in a 
large sense must possess originality." 



What is a Liberal Education 



So much is being said about practical educa- 
tion that it may be well to pause for a moment 
to try to renew our acquaintance with liberal 
education. Perhaps after our long time spent in 
contemplation of the newer we may see the old 
in a new light. Perhaps we shall discover that 
we have, all this time, been looking at the same 
thing. 

It is not at all impossible that the reason for 
these newer forms of education, or new names for 
old forms, is simply the necessary protest against 
calling an education liberal that is only the liberal 
education of another and bygone period in the 
development of civilization, and not at all a liber- 
al education of to-day. 

It does not seem necessary to argue that what 
has been a liberal education for a past generation 
cannot be for today. We have only to cite some 
factor in what one may set up as a standard for 
such an education, and then trace this factor back 
to its rise as a part of human possessions, to es- 
tablish the fact that the dennition of a liberal 
education must be progressive. Our present task 
is, therefore, not to determine what has I ceri a 



100 MECHANICAL SCIENCE 

liberal education, not what it may be, but rather, 
what it is at the present time. 

Education is Progressive 

Our next step may be to call attention to the 
fact that it this matter of education is progressive, 
then to argue that certain elements have consti- 
tuted a liberal education at some time in the past, 
is also to argue that they cannot constitute a com- 
plete liberal education of the present. We must 
either take the position that the factors of a liberal 
education are fixed or we must admit that the 
liberal education of today must represent develop- 
ments of civilization that did not exist yesterday. 

When this basis of argument is settled our 
problem is one of a search after those things brot 
about thru the progress of the race that are suit- 
able factors of a liberal education. We cannot 
search and say that none can be found. To fail 
to find some new elements is only to admit our 
weakness. The very fact of progess establishes 
the fact that such material exists. 

Must Maintain its Relations 

Then again we may argue that if a liberal ed- 
ucation is to have any bearing upon one's rela- 
tion to society, then as there is progress in society. 



IN EDUCATION 101 

the form, degree, or factors of the education must 
change in order to maintain that relation. It is 
not necessary for us to quibble over the fine points 
in a definition of education of any sort. Make 
the definition what you will, so that it is at all 
reasonable for any specified time and it is inevit- 
able that there will be a necessity for a change from 
time to time as the conditions to v/hich it is to 
respond change. 

How must these factors change? There can be 
but one answer to this question, and that is : 
They must change in harmony with the progress 
with which they are to keep pace. There can be 
no guesswork or theorizing about what changes 
are to be made. To theorize or experiment in 
regard to the fundamentals of these changes is to 
admit incompetence to deal with the problem. 

Patching no Remedy 

Again — as civilization does not develop by 
accretion but by expansion, vre cannot meet this 
grovvth properly by patching onto the system or 
ideals of education of yesterday. No doubt it is 
at this point that our attempts to improve oar 
schools have parted from the possibility^ of suc- 
cess. No doubt this artificial method of en- 
largement has caused not only a failure to pro- 
duce a successful growth, but has also led to the 



102 MECHANICAL SCIENCE 

most inefficient methods of studying the needs 
and the most erroneous selection of material. No 
doubt the method of accretion, the patching on 
of fads and frills, is the easier way of present- 
ing an apparent growth, but as none of the vital 
life-blood of the system ever circulates in these 
patches no matter how tightly stuck on, they soon 
become only a burden and waste. This has often 
been observed by each one who has made any 
considerable study of the present attempt to bring 
our schools up to a satisfactory present standard. 

A Definition 

jNIay we not then take as a definition of a 
liberal education, that education which is to the 
civilization of today what the liberal education of 
yesterday was to the civilization of its day. Does 
not this definition define fully for our purpose 
and provide a standard for all who may wish 
to assist in the present efforts for the univer- 
sally desired better education? No matter to 
what school of phiicsophy or pedagogy one 
may belong, the definition will be helpful and 
point the true method of procedure. Take 
what view one may of v/hat a liberal education 
should be, determine its factors for yesterday, 
and then advanc-e it to present conditions. If 
it cannot be moved up in harmony with tho 



IN EDUCATION 103 

advance in civilization, it never was in harmony 
and never could be considered as liberal. In our 
consideration of what was a liberal education we 
must begin far enuf removed from the present to 
eliminate the influence of present-day discussions. 
With a clear idea of the liberal education of yes- 
terday we may then proceed to determine the es- 
sential for today. 

The Factors in Progress 

In what has been our progress? We need not 
attem.pt to determine all these factors. There is 
no serious disagreement in regard to these matters. 
To establish the general principles would set at 
work an army of individuals thoroiy competent to 
work out the details. The difficulty a.t present is, 
that we do not admit the principle that this prog- 
ress must control the advance in education and de- 
termine the selection of the subject-matter which 
our schools should use. A very casual observation 
or the most searching stud}^ of the question will 
alike reveal that those w^ho control our education- 
al institutions and systems hold to the idea in 
both theory and practice that the factors of a 
liberal education are a rather fixed quantit}^ and 
that to change by assimilating nevv factors is to 
w^eaken rather than strengthen the result. It is 
not many years since an elaborate argument for 



104 MECHANICAL SCIENCE 

this view was made by a thoroly representative 
person, and one need not search long in current 
publications to find similar arguments. 

A False Assumption 

What are all these attempts at a dual system of 
schools but the result of treating liberal education 
as unable to deal with the progressive factors of 
society? Those who advocate the special schools 
may not have considered the problem from this 
point of view, yet there is no denying the fact. 
We cannot deny that the theory of special schools 
is based upon the assumption that civilization has 
developed factors requiring an educational effort 
outside of the possibilities of a Hberal education. 
This is simply stating cither that there is a con- 
stantly increasing num.ber of persons incapable of 
receiving a liberal education, which is simply say- 
ing that we are going to the bad; or, that we have 
become too good to make use of a liberal educa- 
tion. Those who believe that we are degenerating 
as a people may settle their notion v/ith their bad 
digestion. Those who believe we p^re advancing 
and yet that a liberal education cannot meet all 
requirements of the present as it has of the past, 
have the burden of proof upon themselves. 

The first step in advocating special schools is 
to prove that we have developed a condition that 



IN EDUCATION 105 

regular schools cannot meet. This will be diffi- 
cult considering what has been accomplished. 

A Liberal Education Sufficient 

I, for one, believe that a liberal education 
has been sufficient, is now sufficient, and always 
will be sufficient in so far as the public schools 
are concerned with the education of all the chil- 
dren. Private institutions of learning have existed 
parallel to the public schools and no doubt always 
will be patronized by some for certain reasons with 
which the public is not concerned. Then why all 
this cry for practical education, Xrade schools, spe- 
cial schools, and the like? Simply because our pub- 
lic schools have long since ceased to give a lib- 
eral education. 

It is not my purpose at this time to discuss the 
details of a li])eral education. I wish only to call 
attention to the principle by which these details 
must be determined, knowing that persons in differ- 
ent environments, differently educated and of dif- 
ferent temperaments will apply them differently, 
and that a proper application of these principles 
must lead to the establishing of a really liberal ed- 
ucation by all these various classes. Uniformity 
in details is neither desirable nor possible, but uni- 
formit}^ in the general application of the funda- 
mental principle is not only possible, but essential. 



106 MECHANICAL SCIENCE 



Where We Have Failed 

Then wherein have we failed? In not recogniz- 
ing the fundamental principle that a liberal edu- 
cation of any time or period is the outgrowth of 
the civilization of that period. We have failed to 
recognize that the liberal education of today is 
the liberal education of yesterday, grown out by 
internal expansion to the thiiigs of toda3\ A¥e 
have acted upon the belief that education must 
becom_e bigger and bigger in bulk and to accom- 
plish this have stuck on, not only some of the 
things that are the outgrowth of progress, but 
also many things that belong to the dead and 
buried past; things that have many times been 
used in attempts to improve education and al- 
ways have failed. Failing to apply the rule that 
in civilization's progress must be found the new 
factors, we have lost entirely our means of selection, 
a.nd have found ourselves quite as active and ear- 
nest in attempting to annex things of the past as 
of the present. We have so completely lost our 
standard of measurement that substantially every 
acquisition and activity of the race, past as well as 
modern, is advocated as an essential of some form 
of schoolwork. Our ideal of bigness has known 
no bomids and everything that could add to size 
or bulk has b39ii annsxed by some riioans to some 



IN EDUCATION 107 

part of the curriculum. 

No sooner has someone found a subject that 
they think of use to a certain class than they ask 
for a law making it a part of the school work. I 
need not take space here to enumerate the subjects 
taught that everyone will admit are not of value to 
every pupil. Some are not of value to any pupil. 
Should I compile such a list each one who reads 
this article would praise me for including most of 
the names and censure me for including others. Not 
one subject could I mention that has not both its 
friends and foes among prominent school people. As 
a whole our curriculum is made up much as some 
appropriation bills in Congress, in which each mem- 
ber asks for the insertion of his pet measure. All pass 
in a lump because no one dares to oppose another's 
measure for fear of losing his own, altho little good 
can be said about the bill as a whole. I do not care 
to make a list, but suggest that each reader make a 
list of the subjects taught in his own school and 
then pencil off those thot to be useless or injurious. 

Patching, Not Growing 

I believe the cause of this abnormally and un- 
scientifically arranged curriculum is that we have 
tried to patch on rather than grow, because we have 
had no definite basis of selection with which to 
keep out the useless or harmful, because we have 



108 MECHANICAL SCIENCE 

failed to realize that the fundamentals of educa- 
tion are always the same as expressed in the age 
for which the education is given and therefore 
have made our selections of - new material from 
superficial reasons rather than by the application 
of a fundamental principle. Such a method of 
selection must necessarily lead to choices because 
of personal preferences, the adding of quite as 
much injurious as helpful material, and an in- 
terminable series of discussions and plans leading 
nowhere in particular. Does not a careful con- 
sideration of the present situation indicate that 
the discussion in all parts of this country is at 
present in this very condition? 

Its Application 

Without going further into the general subject 
k t us now consider the application of this prin- 
ciple to the present problem of ''Industrial Edu- 
cation." 

Why is it that there is such a general demand 
for industrial education? If our premise is cor- 
rect, the answer must be that civilization has 
advanced beyond our system of education. If this 
be true, then the difficulty is not the decline of 
apprenticeship, but the advance of industry which 
hae rendered the apprenticeship system inopera- 
tive and s?t a standard of requirements for a 



IN EDUCATION 109 

liberal education which the schools, as at pres- 
ent organized, are unable to fill. 

Decline of Apprenticeship 

The decline of apprenticeship might be discussed 
at length would space permit, but for the pres- 
ent we must be content with the general state- 
ment that it is the result of progress in industry. 
It is not because employers cannot find time to 
train apprentices as they were trained in the 
past, but because such a training as the typical 
apprentice received is no longer worth while. 
The average proprietor of a century ago trained 
apprentices because he found the training which 
he could give of value to him and a profitable in- 
vestment. The proprietor of today does not, as 
a rule, train apprentices, because he has discover- 
ed that such a training as he can give by the es- 
tablished methods of apprenticeship does not as a 
rule produce a satisfactory workman. These state- 
ments do not apply to such school shops as are 
maintained by some employers. 

Probably Mr. Nasmyth was the first eminent 
engineer employer to discover that industry de- 
manded something which apprentices did not get, 
and that some boys with no apprenticeship pos- 
sessed a mental equipment and education that 
made them superior to regularly trained appren- 



110 MECHANICAL SCIENCE 

tices. So emphatically did these boys demonstrate 
their superiority over the apprentices that Mr. 
Nasmyth avoided employing apprentice- trained 
boys as much as possible. 

The Training Needed 

We may now ask, ''What training had these 
boys that made them desirable as workmen in 
the employ of the great mechanic?" The answer 
is simply this: They belong to that same type 
of mind as Henry Maudslay, a type that the age 
had developed and expressed by more or less nu- 
merous specimens in many communities. They 
were the few type individuals who represented 
the intellectual advance of the race, and so long 
as the higher grades of industry were so limited 
in extent, such as these were fairly sufhcient to 
supply the demand. Were this t^^pe of industry 
static rather than dynamic the few type individ- 
uals w^ould always be sufficient to supply its limit- 
ed needs. But this high type of industry develops 
by artificial stimuli to such an extent as to re- 
quire a large percentage of similarly qualified 
workers, while the natural development of those 
able to fill the positions proceeds but slowly. 
Consequently, the demand exceeds the supply and 
the lack of qualified individuals finally reaches 
such a stress as to be a pubhc problem. This is 



I 



IN EDUCATION 111 

where we are today and are told that the remedy 
is to re-estabUsh the apprenticeship system, either 
by establishing trade schools, or by patching on 
to our present education by compelling our young 
people to attend school at night or part days after 
entering industry. In none of these schemes is 
there any stated purpose to develop the higher 
type of individual required by industry, nor is 
there claimed to be used any subject matter dif- 
fering in essentials from that of the regular schools 
plus an apprenticeship training. A somewhat ex- 
tended inquiry both by correspondence and by 
personal visits to our most noted public schools 
of this class has fully convinced the writer that 
the curricula of substantially all these schools 
consist of a combination in varying proportions of 
these two elements. If it be true that the real 
problem as indicated by our definition is not the 
training of apprentices or establishing of trade re- 
actions, but of a later type of education, then the 
] ^resent scheme for these special schools is doomed 
to failure in its attempts to aid industry/, quite 
as much as has been the failure of the common 
and unscientific manual training work to yield an 
industrial value. The writer does not wish to be 
understood as questioning the value of the various 
efforts now being made under the name of night 
schools, extension schools, etc., to teach bo3^s and 
girls the simple fundamentals of a common school 



112 MECHANICAL SCIENCE 

edu3atioii, — to teach these young people what 
many of them studied for long years in the com- 
mon schools but failed to learn. 

Present Efforts Not Satisfactory 

At first thot the writer may appear to be over- 
confident of the application of this principle and to 
be asserting a personal opinion against established 
facts. A careful inquiry will, how^ever, reveal that 
very few if any of the present attempts at pub- 
lic industrial education are satisfactory to their 
friends and none are vfithout the criticisms of 
some of those high in educational circles, all of 
which should keep us in search of some fundamen- 
tal principles big enuf to control the situation and 
broad eunf to permit each individual to proceed 
toward the goal without doing violence to any well 
considered ideals of public education. Does not 
the definition here given of a liberal education 
supply this principle? 

Two Classes 

Progress is the one word that expresses the 
cause of all the trouble, and therefore it is by 
advancing a larger number of individuals toward 
the front rank of intelligence that we shall be 
able to meet the demand. Those of large natur- 



IN EDUCATION 113 

al endowment will then, on leaving school, be fit- 
ted for the large places of industry; those of lesser 
endowment will take their places according to 
their several abilities; but all will have become 
more useful and in harmony with the develop- 
ments of this age. It is at this point that the 
two great branches of educational activity are 
formed. The one does not recognize the element 
of progress as the cause and does not seek the 
remedy in an advanced and higher type of ed- 
ucation. The other recognizes the element of 
progress as the cause and supplies the need by 
an education that will force all classes of indi- 
viduals toward the most advanced type. 

The vital difference between the two lines of 
effort is not that one thinks any more or less of 
our system of pubHc education as at present op- 
erated, but rather that the former would supply 
the need by taking certain individuals and at- 
tempting to fit them by giving certain informa- 
tion and reactions to special details of industry, 
while the latter would develop all towards the 
type and depend upon environment and capacity 
to place each individual in the most suitable kind 
of employment. Much of the lack of employment 
that usually prevails is due to the inability of in- 
dividuals to adapt themselves to opportunities. 
By emphasizing special courses and special schools 
we are likely only to aggravate the diiiiculty. 



114 MECHANICAL SCIENCE 



What Material to Use 

When we clearly recognize this distinction we 
can have no doubt as to which plan of procedure 
should be followed by the public schools of a 
democratic country. It then becomes only a 
question of what material to use as a part of our 
school course to produce this result. This brings 
us again to cur principles of selection and we 
proceed to inquire what have been the chief ele- 
ments of progress. This may be answered by a 
consensus of opinions, by a study of present civ- 
ilization, or by a careful search of the advanced 
type form. I believe that either method will yield 
the same result — that by any fair means of inquir}^ 
we must find the great advance of today in the 
power of man over solid materials. This is not 
in his power to pile up pyramids, or to wear away 
his life in carving a minute image, but rather in 
his power to deal with and shape solid materials 
by the direction of his intellect rather than by 
muscle. It is not that his arms are any stronger 
than those of the workman of past ages, for they 
are not. It is rather that his mind is taking the 
place of muscle and that his scientific knowledge 
of the working of solid materials gives power infi- 
nitely beyond that which has ever been possible 
by the strcngest arm or the mcst skilful band. 



IN EDUCATION 115 

In brief: This advance is in the displacing of 
muscle by mind and the displacing of skill by 
science in shaping solid materials to serve the 
purposes of man. 

This advance, then, has given us another science 
which should form a part of the subject matter 
for our schools. By use of this subject matter 
we may force the development of the desired 
type of individual. We then have no revolution 
in education to be brot about, no patching on 
of ''fads and frills'', no cleavage in our system 
of public schools, no changes in our general plan 
of courses, — only the adding of another science 
with its laboratories and its teachers and the 
usual re-adjustments that must follow the taking 
on of a recently developed subject. This subject 
takes no special place, asks no special favors, 
except such as may be accorded because of its 
exceptional value. It has a special and funda- 
mental reason for its existence in the school in 
its necessity as a part of the material with which 
the m.ind must deal in order to reach the ad- 
vanced development necessary in modern indus- 
try. It also has the claim of being the latest 
development of the race, and therefore, from our 
definition, it may claim a very essential pait of 
a liberal education. It gives us as a result of 
our inquiry what was well understood by the 
founders of the manual training movement, 



116 MECHANICAL SCIENCE 

that is, that the best liberal education and the 
best industrial education are one and the same. 
It is not necessary for us to claim that Dr. Bel- 
field realized the full significance of the statement, 
''The Chicago Manual Training School was found- 
ed to train the mind by the use of the hands." 
Every movement must be subject to growth. 
Those vvho have studied thoroly the work of that 
school cannot doubt but that the germ of that 
idea was present from the first inception of the 
school. Those who had the privilege of associa- 
tion with Dr. Belfield as had the writer, can 
have no doubt of his belief in this ideal thruout 
his connection with the school. His tenacious 
holding to this ideal against most active opposi- 
tion after the school was connected with the Uni- 
versity of Chicago, is fairly good evidence that 
it was a fundamental principle in his ideals of 
^%hop work" in school. 

Tlie Mistakes of Friends 

Then why has not the work developed along 
this line? Why do we see two such radically dif- 
fering branches developing from the same trunk? 

The fate of the manual training movement 
has been the common fate of many good ideas. 
When Dr. Woodward in the early fight for man- 
ual training prayed that the movement might be 



IN EDUCATION 117 

delivered from the mistakes of its friends, he no 
doubt saw with a clear vision what was to ocem*. 
It was so easy to see the smoke from the great 
chimney, so easy to see the tools and machinery, 
so easy to hear the saws and the ring of the 
anvils; but so hard to grasp the spirit of a 
movement which was based on such a high ideal 
and dealt with subject-matter so recently develop- 
ed and entirely outside the experiences of the av- 
erage individual. 

More than one great individual visited the 
school and caught some of the enthusiasm and 
much of the form, but none of the ideal, and re- 
turned to his own city to establish a school in 
which to build a big chimney and make lots of 
noise, but without either the ideals or the spirit 
of '^training the mind thru the hands." 

Handwork Instead of Science 

It was a line of work subject to many changes 
while keeping some of the physical forms, and 
soon '^handwork" became the cry from Boston 
to San Francisco. The fact that this v/ork came 
into existence to utilize a line of subject-matter 
that is the result of the latest advance in civili- 
zation was entirely overlooked. Instead, any- 
thing that could call the hands into use was drawn 
upon to furnish the desired variety of ^'occupa- 



118 MECHANICAL SCIENCE 

tions.'^ Altho to the well-intending enthusiasts 
the work seemed to be the same or a little bet- 
ter than that of the Chicago school, it missed 
entirely the subject-matter which should have 
been taught. 

Almost at the first we see the importation of 
teachers and ideals from a country that knew 
substantially nothing of modern industry. We 
were soon treated to the peculiar spectacle of 
seeing this imported and utterly un-American and 
anti-modern system of handwork which possessed 
none of the real subject-m^atter, eulogized by 
our great American educators who should have 
known better. 

With such an introduction is it any wonder 
that all that represented the later developments 
of modern civilization in the working of solid 
materials was driven out of our school shop 
v» ork and even the original ideal forgotten by 
many? With such an abandonment of the very 
fundamental principles on which the work was 
founded, is it any wonder that chaos should 
reign in the school shops of the country and 
that the products of these shops should not 
make good in modern American industry? Is 
it any wonder that while recognizing the failure 
of the ''handwork" to make good educationall3^ 
those controlling the situation should bring into 
the school shops all sorts of extraneous matter 



IN EDUCATION 119 

in their blind attempts to gain the results that 
all intuitively feel should result from the work- 
ing of solid materials? 

A Constant Shifting 

With an utter oversight of the subject matter 
of the school shop, because they have absolute- 
ly no knowledge of it, we see teachers of ''hand- 
work'' shifting from kites to engines, from doll 
houses to full-size buildings, only to meet the 
same dissatisfaction with results after their work 
has been in operation long enuf to permit modern 
industry to place its stamp ''No Good" upon it. 
It is a constant and mad rush for something 
that can be patched on to an antiquated ideal 
of education; a persistent determination to worship 
the past ideal and intellectual attainments rather 
than to receive the newer and stronger as the 
basis for a liberal education. With no possible 
middle ground this conflict must go on until 
the stronger wins, unless in our educational life 
we do as our educators advise others to do and 
submit the question to arbitration. 

The Remedy 

If we are agreed thus far in our consideration 
of the question, what is a liberal education, we 



120 MECHANICAL SCIENCE 

should have no serious difficulty in finding a sure 
remedy for our educational ills. 

First of all, let us be far more particular in 
judging of the work at present given. Let us 
be very careful to determine just how much 
benefit each pupil receives, and to what definite 
part of the work the benefit should be credited. 

If a school gives a course in manual training 
and some of the pupils go out into some in- 
dustrial line and make good, do not jump at the 
conclusion that it is a result of the manual 
training instruction, for many boys have made 
good mxost remarkably who have had no such 
manual training experience. The same will apply 
to an investigation of trade or technical schools. 
Let us also not overlook the failures; ^'count 
your failures" is a saying of one of our greatest 
educators. 

Also, be sure to study carefully the pupil who 
leaves school and makes good in a line entirely 
different from the one for which he prepared while 
in school. Above all else, v/e must know what 
this pupil got from his school course, or what he 
possessed by nature that survived the school course 
that has given him success. Some interesting 
and valuable records have been gathered show- 
ing that some pupils go out from special classes 
into occupations differing materially from those for 
which they were fitted by their special work. 



IN EDUCATION 121 



A Childish Argument 

With these facts in view there can be no more 
childish argument advanced in support of our 
I)resent system of education or of any trade 
school, or special school of any kind, than to call 
attention to the successful life work of certain 
individuals. The requirements for admission to 
some schools are such that few if any boys are 
admitted who would not likely have made good 
in almost any line of industry had they gone di- 
rectly into industry, omitting entirely the school 
work that is now given credit for their success. 
Any of these people who have completed manual 
training or trade courses can be matched by 
those who have been in school little or none at 
all, and therefore unless we can show that these 
successful individuals owe their success to the 
schools, we have nothing with which to refute 
the statements that they were simply strong 
enuf to succeed in spite of time wasted in school. 

The test of educational efforts is not the 
successes of a few selected individuals but the 
amount of advance produced on all those who 
attend school. Unless it can be shown that there 
is a general advance all along the line of the 
various types and capacities of pupils then the 
school is a failure, no matter to what eminence 



122 MECHANICAL SCIENCE 

certain individuals may attain. In fact, I do not 
claim that they are; but if our public schools are 
organized for the purpose of starring certain indi- 
viduals to the neglect of the masses, they are not 
only failures, but utterly unworthy the considera- 
tion of a democratic people, and those who are 
intentionally organizing them for this purpose, if 
there te such, are traitors to our government 
and the ideals of our people. 

Educate AH Pupils 

The remedy lies, therefore, not in attempt- 
ing to segregate a few individuals to be trained 
for exhibition purposes but rather in searching 
out such subject matter as will lift the entire 
student body to higher planes of life and social 
efficiency and using it for the benefit of all 
classes of pupils. We should attempt by the 
artificial means known as public education to 
advance • the entire rising generation toward the 
standard set by the type individuals that lead 
the advance of the race. 

When we have thus secured the proper subject 
matter then w^e should actually test it out. We 
^should not be satisfied with some nominal tryout 
that omits everything but the mere form, as we 
have been in our attempts to determine the 
efficiency of manual training, but rather make 



IN EDUCATION 123 

such a test as will actually show the values of 
each element as measured by the needs of 
society as it is constituted at the present 
time. 

Harmful Studies 

In making these tests we should not overlook 
the possibility that some subjects of study may 
be harmful. If our definition of a liberal edu- 
cation is correct, if the call of industry is for 
a higher type of mind, then we must be ex- 
tremely careful lest we compel our students to 
study that which tends to develop a type of 
mind unsuited to modern needs. The writer's 
experience with certain schooled individuals causes 
him to urge a most careful investigation of this 
feature of the problem. He is so fully convinced 
that our educators as a class wish for the best 
as to feel that the chief factor in determining a 
remedy is to determine what subjects and meth- 
ods tend to supply the mental equipment desired 
and what are of neutral or negative character. 

If such an inquiry is made, with our defini- 
tion of a liberal education to indicate the sub- 
jects to be most carefully scrutinized, the rem- 
edy for our industrial needs will appear so con- 
spicuously that no one will dare to stand in its 
way. 



124 MECHANICAL SCIENCE 



Such Work Does Succeed 

This is not the time to discuss a Mechanical 
Science course, yet this article would be incom- 
plete without stating that the conclusions drawn 
in regard to the requirements of a practical ed- 
ucation are backed by sufficient actual demon- 
strations as to leave no doubt in regard to the 
proper course to pursue. 

To claim today that the regular schools can- 
not give a line of shopwork that is all that can 
be desired in fitting boys and girls for active 
industrial occupations is to admit one's ignorance 
of what is actually being accomplished. The fact 
that some of the most conspicuous public school 
systems are doing the most extremely useless and 
even injurious work in their attempts to teach 
"handwork" is not a sufficient excuse for ignoring 
the good work that is being accomplished else- 
where. It is a question as to whether our school 
work is to have the same definite and uncom- 
promising tests as would be given to a modern 
business enterprise. To use a common phrase, 
Are we to have "scientific management" in our 
schools or are we to strive in a general way for 
the best with a set determination that certain 
theories and policies are to remain, regardless of 
their injury to progressive education? 



IN EDUCATION 125 



The following is a reprint of an address by 
Mr. Selden as published in the Proceedings of the 
National Education Association of 1914. This 
address is used because it calls attention to the 
one most serious difficulty in the advancement 
of public education. This difficulty results from 
the tendency of those now in control to interpret 
attempts at improvement in terms in harmony 
with the established order. It is very difficult 
for those who have been long in public school 
work to see the advantages of the new in terms 
of the changed social conditions that have become 
general since these eminent educators became 
static in their work. 



Problems in the Successful 
Teaching of Mechanical Science 



Briefly stated, the difficulties of introduciDg 
mechanical science courses are the same as those 
attending the introduction of any improvement. 
It is the tendency of the established order to 
interpret the improvement in terms in harmony 
with itself and to make it in reality nothing but 
a changed form of something in the old order, 
and then, after having taken all the newness out 
of it, to discard it as being no improvement and 
of no value. In tracing the school shop move- 
ment, we learn that this is exactly what has been 
done and that we are now in yet another stage — 
that of attempting to find some nev7 material af- 
ter the original movement has been rendered 
abortive and set aside. To state the principle con- 
cretely, the school-shop movemxent has been rob- 
bed of its vitality, and now attempts are being 
made to gain the values that should have resulted 
from the original movement by the establishmient 
of all sorts of trade, continuation, vocational, and 
similar schools. It is not my purpose to name 



128 MECHANICAL SCIENCE 

any specific remedy for the present condition, but 
rather to point a sure method that will lead, not 
only to finding the remedy, but also to a certain- 
ty of its being applied. 

I believe you will not object to the ideas I ad- 
vance simply because they are new, or because, 
from a superficial consideration, they may appear 
to be the same as have been considered in times 
past. Nor will you give them less attention be- 
cause they appear to be at variance with the doc- 
trines of some of our most esteemed leaders of 
educational thot. 

I can do no more than suggest some plan of 
action that will lead to the determining of what 
is best; for the duty of bringing the best out of 
these conditions rests upon the administrative 
part of the educational machinery. However much 
we may wish to shift some of this responsibility 
to superintendent or teacher, yet in the final 
analysis the board is responsible. Many a super- 
intendent would do more effective work if he 
thot his board members were so thoroly inform- 
ed of what was being done that they were definitely 
in sympathy with his work. Many teachers would 
work harder and get far better results did they 
know that the details of improvement were known 
and appreciated by those in authority. When, by 
such a searching inquiry as I suggest, the admin- 
istrative factor is thoroly informed, there can be 



IN EDUCATION 129 

no doubt as to what action will be taken, for the 
great majority wish our schools to yield the 
largest possible returns in good to all. Last, but 
not least, the whole educational machinery would 
run smoother and accomplish far more if every 
unit felt that there was such a definite knowledge 
of what was being done that there would be no 
mistakes in rewarding the efficient and in elimina- 
ting the inefficient. 

It has been my opinion for some time that the 
most urgent need in solving the present problems 
in education is a more extensive study of these 
problems on the part of school-board members. 
As I have listened to the many eloquent address- 
es at this meeting, this need has been greatly em- 
phasized, and I have been compelled to add to the 
list of serious difficulties that of the great power 
of the highly trained intellect to enforce with 
great appearance of wisdom the most ill-advised 
theories in regard to the school-shop movement. 
This appears to result, not from any lack of desire 
to say and do that which is best, but rather from 
the difficulty of getting a proper grasp of a move- 
ment that is based upon subject-matter with which 
these people had no experience as they passed 
thru their school work. 

To gather the necessary information on which 
to base judgments is not easy. May I encourage 
you to take up this important task with a convic- 



130 MECHANICAL SCIENCE 

tion that nothing but first-hand facts are to be 
used by those in administrative positions. May I 
also suggest that there is sometimes a vast differ- 
ence in the conclusions that are drawn from casual 
observation and from the searching inquiry. We 
have in our administration of schools too many 
judgments formed upon casual observation aiid 
hearsay testimony. We see men in these positions 
deciding important questions on information of a 
kind that would be given no weight whatever in 
determining their business activities. 

Probably the most common error in judging of 
any part of school work is the neglect to consider 
the personal factor. We should not consider what 
the pupil is on leaving school, but rather to what 
extent and in what manner the school has worked 
a change. This is especially true in determining 
the school value of any mechanical or industrial 
work. We need to make a close inspection 
to determine how many pupils are helped by 
the school shop and how many simply survive 
it. To know that certain boys go out from the 
school shop into industry and succeed is of no 
consequence whatever in determining the value 
of the shop work; because there are in every com- 
munity boys who will succeed in spite of bad 
schooUng. That which must be determined is the 
actual effect of the work by tracing the various 
pupils thru the school and out into industry. As 



IN EDUCATION 131 

has been said, we must count the failures, we 
must determine the number who have been helped 
and also those who have fallen out by the way, 
and then we must determine whether in any school 
or by any system of work these failures could 
have been avoided or to any extent lessened. 
It is "dead easy" for a teacher to point to a few 
successes and then lay the blame for the failures 
to the lack of ability on the part of those who 
fail. In any American community there are both 
boys and girls whc can do most excellent work 
in wood and metal if provided with tools, materials, 
and a place in which to work. Therefore if the 
teacher can point only to some nicely finished 
projects as the result of his work it is quite 
possible that the money spent for that teacher 
has been wasted. The pupils who have not 
achieved success, those whose work usually is 
not shown, are the ones whose records should be 
most thoroly scrutinized. It is the special duty 
of the administrative part of education to deter- 
mine with certainty whether these failures are 
due to the pupil or to the mistakes of the ad- 
ministration in selecting an incompetent teacher 
or an incompetent superintendent who is not 
getting the best out of the teacher. 

From a somewhat extensive study of this 
particular question in regard to shopwork, I can 
say that with pupils of similar talents attending 



132 MECHANICAL SCIENCE 

various schools the proportion of failures to suc- 
cesses varies from nearly all failures in some schools 
to nearly all successes in other schools. This 
means that the administrative part of the educa- 
tional machine is badly out of repair in some 
cities; it means that those in authority are being 
satisfied with results far below what should be 
gained. And I may add that I have sometimes 
found those who are the most deserving of censure 
to be those who are most outspoken in their cer- 
tainty that their shop work is of the best. 

But this is not all. The pupil of limited talent 
is the very one who needs help, and, however 
limited his talent, if he is above idiocy, the 
greater is the necessity of raising his level of in- 
dustrial efficiency, for he is certain to join the 
ranks of industry, while the one of large con- 
structive talent, tho making a record in the school 
shop and helping out on exhibition day, is almost 
certain to enter some other line. For the con- 
structive faculty that may shine in industry is 
the same as that which makes the great business 
man and the great professional man. 

Now why this great difference? For neither 
the efficient nor the inefficient teaching is confined 
to any particular class or type of schools or to 
any particular geographical area. I think you 
will find, if you investigate with proper care and 
thoroness, that it largely depends upon whether we 



IN EDUCATION 183 

teach principles or processes. It matters little 
by what name the work is called or in what kind 
of school it is given. You will find many grada- 
tions from the all-process to the largely-science 
teaching in schools of all grades, and sometimes 
great variations in the same school system, even 
in the same building. I have seen excellent in- 
struction in science in the common graded schools 
and the merest sham at teaching processes in 
keeping with the methods of bygone ages in na- 
tionally known trade and industrial schools. This 
could not be were the administrators actually 
performing their full duty. 

The fundamental principles of working solid 
materials may be taught successfully and thoroly 
by the use of wood alone in the one-room country 
school, in the consolidated school, in the regular 
high school, and in the technical school. On the 
other hand, pupils may spend long hours in the 
making of things from toy doll houses to real 
dwellings, from the useless sloyd models to sets of 
furniture; they may work every material from 
plasticine to steel, and yet thru all this extensive 
course in either common or special schools they 
may not learn one single principle of working solid 
materials. They then go out into industry with 
the ideals and mental equipment of the ancient 
Egyptian craftsman rather than with those of the 
modern scientific workman. It therefore is not 



134 MECHANICAL SCIENCE 

safe to judge of the work of any school by the 
magnitude of the institution, the extent of the 
equipment, or the credentials of the instructors or 
even those of the principal. 

The cause of all this interminable discussion, 
this ever-increasing demand for efficient workmen, 
lies not in the fact that young men as they enter 
industry cannot make things and make them so 
they will be salable at some price, but rather in 
that these young people have been trained to be 
craftsmen rather than modern scientific workmen, 
and therefore are unadaptable, incapable of grasp- 
ing modern ideals of workmanship, and cannot 
produce work on a profitable basis. How may we 
expect to remedy this condition unless those in 
authority have a sufficiently definite knowledge 
of what is being done to distinguish between the 
craftsmanship of bygone days and modern scien- 
tific workmanship? 

We may build industrial, special, continuation, 
or what-not kinds of schools until we have du- 
plicated our present system, and we shall yet be 
as far from solving this question of efficiency as 
we now are, except in so far as we teach in those 
schools the science of working solid materials 
rather than the processes. 

What then are we to do? Simply get right 
down to a thoro study of the problem from this 
standpoint and determine what is essential to the 



IN EDUCATION 135 

teaching of the science and also determine what 
forms of work lend themselves to the illumination 
of the study of this science. There should not be 
the least objection raised by anyone to such an in- 
quiry, altho there are many reasons for objecting 
to a superficial or partial investigation. For one 
not an expert in this line to make a proper study 
of the shopwork of any school will require consid- 
erable time; and it will be found far better to visit 
a few schools and come away with the actual know- 
ledge of what is being accomplished than to rush 
thru many schools and form erroneous conclusions, 
which I know to have often been the case. 

We must not go into this study with our heads 
set in favor of some special method or model and 
dead set against some other. There is no question 
but that the set of models usually thot of as repre- 
senting the Russian system was originally used to 
teach tool processes to the entire neglect of the 
science. Yet some of those models have been used 
with great success in teaching the science. 

Permit me to make a few suggestions in regard 
to what constitutes authority in an investigation 
of school-shop work. If one wishes information in 
regard to teaching Greek, he goes to one who both 
knows Greek and knows how to teach it. If one 
wishes to know how to teach mathematics, he goes 
to one who both knows mathematics and knows 
how to teach that subject. Then may I ask you, 



136 MECHANICAL SCIENCE 

as you pursue your investigation of school-shop 
work, to take with great caution the advice of 
those who neither know the subject-matter of 
school-shop work nor have shown any evidence 
of being able to teach even the most elementary 
lessons in this work. 

I care not who they are nor how eminent are 
their positions as educators, if they wish to estab- 
hsh their ideas in regard to teaching this subject 
we must ask them to prove by some means that 
they have the requisite material from which to 
formulate such theories; and, when they wish us 
to accept their theories in refutation of demon- 
strated success by those actually engaged in this 
work, I caution you to hesitate before permitting 
the assumption of authority to override actual dem- 
onstrations. It is at this very point that most of 
our troubles entered. Trace the early work, and 
we will find that it is largely because of accepting 
the advice of those not familiar with the school- 
shop movement that the work lost its value, and 
we are by no means away from this same difficulty. 

Today we hear much said about educational 
shop work in our regular public schools under the 
name of manual training, manual arts, and simi- 
lar appellations. Usually the advocates of these 
kinds of work claim for them great educational 
values and also claim that they have not and 
ought not to have any industrial value. 



IN EDUCATION 137 

If we trace the history of this kind of work 
and these claims, we shall learn that this work 
is simply the shadow of the real educational and 
industrial shop work as at first established, and 
that only after the utter worthlessness of this 
shadow as a preparation for industry had been 
demonstrated did its advocates crawl under cover 
by claiming that it was purely for educational 
values and that it should not be expected to 
yield industrial values. 

I, for one, most seriously doubt the statement 
that there is educational value worth while in 
such work. If my experience counts for anything 
at all, the industrial value of school-shop wor'k 
will keep pace with the educational value, and 
when the industrial value ceases ail values worth 
the expense have ceased. To say that the work 
is educational is to attempt to cover up a failure. 
There is no such thing as educational manual 
training apart from industrial manual training. 
The very elements that are essential to give edu- 
cational value are the very foundation values of 
industrial efficiency. Put these values into the 
work and you have the very best possible indus- 
trial education, tho it may be given in a regular 
school. Omit them and you have only education- 
al bluff no matter by what name the instruction 
is called or where it is given. 

My final message which I wish to leave with 



138 MECHANICAL SCIENCE 

you is no longer to take the word of anyone 
in this matter but to make for yourselves the 
most thoro inquiry in regard to the values of 
the school-shop work as at present given in your 
own schools and also in other schools. 



Manual Training 
Equipment 



There is a great diversity in the equipments 
now in use and little can be learned by merely 
asking what equipment is possessed by some school, 
for a close inspection may reveal that the equip- 
ment purchased at large expense and generally 
reported as "the bsst" is known by thoso in a 
position to know the facts to be thoroly unsat- 
isfactory. 

There may, however, be a wide diversity in 
equipments because of local conditions. The school 
board that puts a plank on brackets against the 
side wall of a schoolroom and provides a chest 
of but a few tools because the community cannot 
do more, is deserving of quite as much praise as 
the community of larger resources that is able 
and does provide a complete equipment. The 
boards that deserve to be censured are those that 
will not do what they can to provide for this 
essential part of school work, and those who go to 
the other extreme of filling up their rooms with 



140 MECHANICAL SCIENCE 

equipment selected because it is expensive and 
for the purpose of making a show, exposing their 
ignorance and bad judgment rather than an inter- 
est in the welfare of the pupik. 

Purpose of Equipment 

Manual training should be in the schools for 
a definite purpose and every tool and part of 
equipment of any sort should be selected with a 
view to carrying out that purpose. As we believe 
that the purpose of manual training in the public 
schools is to study the science of working solid 
materials that the pupil may gain in intellectual 
power, general intelligence and ability to make 
good after leaving school, we would select for 
equipment only those things that tend to this end. 

It is, therefore, very evident that serious mis- 
takes may be made in the selection of tools. To 
place wood files in the hands of beginners in wood 
work will result very much the same as to give 
to the beginners in arithmetic a key to that book, 
or to give to the student in Latin ''a pony" for his 
translation. Those who have not made a study 
of the scientific principles of working solid mater- 
ials cannot realize the loss in intellectual growth, 
interest, and ability to do a high grade of work 
that results from the use of such ^'pony" tools and 
therefore, we find well intending school officials 



IN EDUCATION 141 

lowering the value of the work by supplying 
files and coping saws. No doubt teachers may 
be greatly aided by the refusal of the board to 
permit the use of such tools and thus encourage a 
better line of work. There is really no excuse 
for continuing the use of such equipment, for 
there are excellent texts to be had that provide 
an abundance of problems entirely freed from all 
temptation to ^'pony" the work. 

Permanent Equipment 

No longer do school boards need to fear that 
the equipment will soon be cast aside because 
of the ^'fad" passing away. Neither do they need 
to fear any changes that will render the equip- 
ment obsolete, provided they secure those things 
that are required for a high grade of work. There 
is no doubt about the tendency at present being 
toward a higher grade of work, and the use of 
such equipment as will make this possible. It is 
scarcely possible that there will ever be a return 
to the shabby work of the past. Tiierefore, if a 
good standard equipment is installed there will 
not likely be required any changes except those 
which occur from time to time because of im- 
provements in tools or new inventions. This 
progress will be slow and therefore, if the best 
for our purpose today is suppUed, it will likely 



142 MECHANICAL SCIENCE 

be thoroly satisfactory until worn out. It appears 
to be the duty of those who purchase the equip- 
ment to see that every article is first class, not nec- 
essarily the most expensive, but exactly the thing 
for the use intended. 

Definite Specifications 

This leads to the suggestion that the usual 
custom of submitting lists to several dealers for 
bids, altho the proper thing to do, often fails to get 
a fair comparison of prices, because of indefinite- 
ness in the specifications. The writer recalls a case 
that is typical of many. Two leading firms in the 
manual training equipment business bid on a large 
bill of equipment. The prices submitted totaled 
almost alike, one firm underbidding the other but 
a small amount. Naturally the lower bidder got 
the order. 

On receiving the goods it was discovered that 
the bench brushes, altho answering the specifica- 
tion, were worth about twenty cents each and were 
unfit for school use, while the other firm would 
have supplied a fifty-cent brush. The difference in 
value of the brushes was about double the difference 
in the totals of the two bids. We do not advocate 
the purchase of large equipments without getting 
prices from various houses, but rather the most 
complete specifications in all cases. 



IN EDUCATION 143 

We must not leave this topic without referring 
to another type of purchasing. There is one firm 
that probably surpasses all others in its constant 
advocacy of the purchasing of the ''best." This 
sounds all right, but when we consider that this 
firm's interpretation of the word ''best" does not 
mean quahty, but the most expensive styles, then 
we take issue. 

A certain school was equipped on this plan by 
this firm, their equipment costing some eight thous- 
and dollars. A judicious selection would have ob- 
tained a far more useful equipment for four thous- 
and dollars. In fact much of the equipment is 
of such a type that it is in the way rather than 
helpful. It ma}^ justly be compared to placing on 
the desk of every sixth grade pupil an unabridged 
dictionary. This school is crippled permanently 
unless some one comes to its relief with sufficient 
grit to dispose of much of the equipment and re- 
place it with that suitable for the school work. 

Controlling Factors 

In the ordinary selection of an equipment two 
factors govern: the grade for which it is intend- 
ed, and the amount of available funds. That 
we may get a basis on which to work I shall sug- 
gest an equipment for the fifth, sixth, seventh, 
and eighth grades, and note such modifications 



144 MECHANICAL SCIENCE 

as would ordinarily be required for a two 
years' high school course in wood work for a 
community able to provide a thoroly satisfactory 
equipment. With this as a basis less favored 
communities can reducs the expense by limiting 
the number of individual tools, etc. I will not 
attempt to cover the work of other grades or 
other subjects. The same principles apply to all 
the grades and all materials suitable for school 
shop work. 

The number of pupils in a class determines 
the number of benches, number of tools in each 
set, and also the number of some of the general 
tools. For convenience we will plan for grade 
classes of twenty and high school classes of the 
same number, altho if the room is of sufficient 
siae and a good text book used, thirty pupils 
can be well cared for in a high school class. 

Benches 

The first and most expensive part of the shop 
equipment is the benches. There are two ways 
of making benches, much wood and little work 
or less wood and more work. Weight is of im- 
portance but of Httle value if the joints are not 
rigid. To successfully demonstrate the principles 
of mechanical science on unsteady benches is 
practically impossible. To purchase such benches 



IN EDUCATION 145 

as a matter of economy will result in serious 
waste, for the larger values of the work will not 
be realized. Instead of that steady thotful use of 
the tools that is essential to proper study you 
will have nervous, jerky movements and the 
study element omitted. 

.To make a substantial bench, a good frame- 
work is necessary. With a good framework it is 
bad business to leave the space under the bench 
as waste room, and go to the expense of provid- 
ing cases of drawers at the sides of the room. 
Side cases have been used to avoid stealing from 
the bench drawers, as the cases were apart from 
the pupils where the teacher could watch them. 

Master keyed locks on the drawers ape of little 
value unless of a very expensive type, and then 
often unsatisfactory to such an extent that schools 
have hesitated to make use of them. These dif- 
ficulties are now all entirely overcome by a lock- 
ing device that makes thieving from drawers 
practically impossible and places the locka under 
the most perfect and convenient control. 

There is, therefore, no longer excuse for the in- 
convenience and disorder resulting from keeping 
either tools or materials apart from the bench. 
See that the framework and paneling actually tend 
to strength and rigidity. Benches for the high 
school should be similar to those for the grades. 
They may be supplied with lathes. This saves 



146 MECHANICAL SCIENCE 

room and for many schools is the best arrange- 
ment, especially for second year or advanced work. 

Vises 

Each bench should be supplied with one vise 
set far enuf from the end to avoid the temptation 
of using it in sawing. Tail vises are not needed, 
and besides being in the way, will do more harm 
than good. No doubt the best style of vise is a 
quick action iron vise. It should, however, have 
a continuous screw and no springs or other parts 
gripping the thread, for the pulling and pushing of 
the movable jaw requires too much strength at the 
best. Here, as in every part of the equipment, 
simplicity should be an important item. Tho a 
mechanic might find it no trouble to spend a 
minute now and then adjusting or oiling a few lit- 
tle pieces, in the school room five pieces to be 
looked after at each bench totals a hundred for 
the teacher, who alone must watch these things. 
A few tools that will not work properly, a few vises 
that occasionally stick or slip, a few benches that 
are constantly becoming shaky, a few keys lost or 
that won't unlock and no way to open the drawers 
6r cases, a few small pieces of work lost or damaged 
because of no safe place for them, just a few of 
these little things in each line and an expensive 
equipment with a competent teacher becomes little 



IN EDUCAHON 147 

more than a waste of money and time. The board 
cannot be too particular in seeing that everything 
is simple, substantial and durable. Good vises, 
substantial benches and drawers under thoro con- 
trol play a very vital part in this result. 

Edge Tools 

For the grades few edge tools are required at 
first. If a properly arranged course is followed 
the chisels will not be needed in the first work 
and the pupils will advance to work requiring 
them with a continued interest not possible if 
all the tools are used in the first lessons. As 
these tools, including the planes, form an impor- 
tant part of the equipment, insist on having those 
that bear the name of some reputable manufac- 
turer who makes a specialty of these tools. In 
planes choose the most simple iron planes having 
both screw and lateral adjustments, with thin bits 
that can be readily rounded. 

Individual Tools 

Each pupil should have his own edge tools, 
because for different work these tools are fitted 
differently, and to teach the science of using 
them they must be fitted exactly right for each 
problem. Pupils cannot be held responsible for 



148 MECHANICAL SCIENCE 

edge tools used in common without consuming 
time seriously needed for other work. A pupil 
should become accustomed to the peculiar char- 
acteristics of his edge tools, and this is impossible 
if they are being changed by others. As a matter 
of economy individual tools will last enuf longer 
to make their use a good business investment. 
Without individual tools pupils will often be 
using those not in the best condition and because 
of this fail to get proper returns for their effort, 
falling behind when it is not their fault, or doing 
poor work because they thot they could get along 
with a plane or chisel not in the best condition. 
It matters little whether they fall behind because 
of attempting to use a dull tool or by taking time 
to sharpen one dulled by another. In either 
case the keen enjoyment of the work is lessened. 
It is the realization of honest returns for honest 
effort that gives the large interest and value to the 
work and that cannot be had if pupils' efforts 
are dissipated by the carelessness or neglect of 
others. 



Note: 

The original article, as published in the 
'^\merican School Board Journal," gave a com- 
plete list of equipment. As the changes in con- 



IN EDUCATION 149 

ditions from year to year render such lists of 
value for only a brief time they are omitted 
from this reprint. 

The publishers desire to be helpful to all 
those interested in equipping schools for Mech- 
anical Science work, and therefore will gladly 
furnish up-to-date lists of tools and other equip- 
ment on receipt of a request. They should be 
supplied with information stating the number 
of pupils to be accommodated, grades in which 
the work is to be taught, and amount of funds 
available for equipment. 



The Mechanical Science Series 

This series of texts presents the work of the 
school shop as a definite science rather than as 
tool processes or methods of making things. The 
entire course is arranged in definite divisions with 
each division arranged according to a definite and 
logical sequence based on the demonstration of 
the fundamental principles of working solid ma- 
terials. Altho this restricts the course to very 
definite portions of subject matter, yet this sub- 
ject matter may be studied and the necessary 
demonstrations made by use of a great variety of 
materials and projects. This variety is largely 
provided for by many suggestions in the texts con- 
cerning modifications of designs, use of different 
woods and various methods of finishing. 

The important and especially interesting fact 
in regard to the Mechanical Science Series is 
that its proper use invariably yields results far 
beyond that of any other line of school shopwork. 
It not only results in a greater interest and far 
better executed projects, but also yields a value 
in preparing for industrial occupations that has 
not been approached by any other system of school 
shop instruction. For complete information in 
regard to these texts, address 

The Maudslay Press 

Valley City, N. Dak. Cranesville, Penn. 



Woodwork for the Grades 

This is the text to be used in beginning shop- 
work in Mechanical Science in whatever grade the 
work is begun in both grades and high school. 

This text contains a large variety of material so 
arranged as to afford opportunity for selecting ex- 
actly the right project for each pupil. There is no 
question but that in actual practice the use of this 
text leads to a more perfect adapting of work to 
individual pupils' needs than is possible with any 
other text or system of instruction. It is a thoro- 
ly practical text and pupils who complete the work 
as given show exceptional interest and ability in 
doing work at home. No other text will compare 
with this one in giving power to do work with tools 
outside of school, as records of pupils show, there- 
by proving this to be a text of exceptional value 
in developing initiative and industrial efficiency. 

The Mechanical Drawings are arranged and 
graded with great care so that the average boy will, 
in using the book, learn, without any special effort, 
to read drawings. The text contains many com- 
plete working drawings of projects from simple 
one-piece projects to chairs and tables. 

This is the text that has the enviable record of 
always having its pupils win first prize whenever 
their work is placed in competition with work of 
other systems and they have been in charge of a 
competent instructor. 



Mechanical Science 
Methods 

This is a text for use in Normal Schools ; it is 
also a most helpful handbook for teachers using 
the Mechanical Science texts. 

It gives in great detail the exact methods to 
be used in presenting the Mechanical Science work 
basing the directions on the first lessons. It is well 
understood by teachers of Mechanical Science that 
the first lessons are extremely important and that 
if they are properly taught, there will be little 
trouble about the others. 

This text is based upon the experiences of 
many teachers and is a thoroly practical and reli- 
able guide. It is not only valuable for the teacher, 
but is also a most helpful book for the principal 
and superintendent, as it supplies exact information 
as to how the work should be taught. The super- 
intendent who requires of his teacher the standard 
and results called for by this text will find his pa- 
trons highy pleased with the interest and values 
resulting from his school shop. 

The Maudslay Press 

Valley City, N. Dak. Cranesville, Penn. 



Elementary Drawing 

This text is for use by those who have had no 
previous instruction in drawing. It covers the first 
essential elementary problems in great detail. The 
instruction given is so very complete that this book 
may be used successfully as a home study text or 
in schools not provided with a special teacher of 
drawing. 

All of the problems correlate very closely with 
those of the shop texts of the Mechanical Science 
series. This is of great assistance in both shopwork 
and drawing. The text on drawing may be referred 
to for aid in understanding the shop drawings and 
the drawings in the shop texts may be referred to as 
examples and additional illustrations of the problems 
in drawing. The text on drawing contains several 
modifications of the problems given in the shop 
texts. These will be found very helpful. 

This text should be used in whatever grade the 
study of mechanical drawing is begun. If condi- 
tions permit, the work should begin in the seventh 
grade with only a very limited equipment. By 
the time the pupil has completed the eighth grade 
he should be able to read any drawing that would 
be given to a boy in regular employment, and 
should be able to make free hand sketches and 
simple mechanical drawings. 



MECHANICAL SCIENCE 

in the 

RURAL SCHOOLS 

Altho Mechanical Science has been repeatedly 
demonstrated to be the best system of industrial in- 
struction for all public schools it has proven especial- 
ly successful" in one-room rural schools. There are 
many reasons why this should be the case. First of 
all the Mechanical Science work directs the pupils 
to definite problems that teach definite principles. 
Having a clear understanding of the principles, 
they use the processes with exceptional success. 

This is the chief factor in securing interest in 
school and in successfully applying the lessons at 
home. The boy or girl who has completed the 
studies in planing, measuring, and sawing as given 
in the Mechanical Science texts will not only be will- 
ing to attempt tasks at home requiring a knowledge 
of these processes, but is certain to accomplish the 
work with thoro success. This will encourage them 
to attempt larger tasks and also gain the commen- 
dation of parents and yet larger opportunities to 
apply their knowlege of industrial work. 

A ''Story of a Rural School" is the title of a 
pamphlet telling what was actually accomplished 
in a one-room rural school. This pamphlet is sent 
free on request to any address. 
The Maudslay Press, Valley City, N. Dak, 



The Mechanical Science Series 

Woodwork for the Grades 

This book for beginners of all grades. $1.00 

Elementary Woodwork 
A book for first lessons in joinery. $1.00 

Elementary Cabinetwork 
A complete high-school course. . $1.00 

Elementary Turning 
By far the best text on wood turning. $1.00 

Suggestive Courses 
A detailed outline for teachers. $0.35 

Mechanical Science Methods 
Should be studied by every teacher. $0.60 

Wood Finishing 
A beginner's hand book for school use. $0.35 

Mechanical Drawing (142 pages) 
Correlated closely with shopwork. $0.75 

Mechanical Science in Education 
A discussion of the fundamental principles. $1.00 

Supplementary Lessons 

Later shop problems. $0.60 

Rural Education In preparation. 

Elementary Patternwork In preparation. 

Elementary Farm Carpentry In preparation. 

No free copies are given out. Examination 
copies are billed postage prepaid, subject to return 
in thirty days, and at fifteen per cent discount. 



